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| IN Ipswich town, not far from the sea, | |
| Rises a hill which the people call | |
| Heartbreak Hill, and its history | |
| Is an old, old legend, known to all. | |
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| The selfsame dreary, worn-out tale | 5 |
| Told by all peoples in every clime, | |
| Still to be told till the ages fail, | |
| And there comes a pause in the march of Time. | |
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| It was a sailor who won the heart | |
| Of an Indian maiden, lithe and young; | 10 |
| And she saw him over the sea depart, | |
| While sweet in her ear his promise rung; | |
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| For he cried, as he kissed her wet eyes dry, | |
| “I ’ll come back, sweetheart; keep your faith!” | |
| She said, “I will watch while the moons go by”: | 15 |
| Her love was stronger than life or death. | |
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| So this poor dusk Ariadne kept | |
| Her watch from the hill-top rugged and steep; | |
| Slowly the empty moments crept | |
| While she studied the changing face of the deep, | 20 |
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| Fastening her eyes upon every speck | |
| That crossed the ocean within her ken; | |
| Might not her lover be walking the deck, | |
| Surely and swiftly returning again? | |
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| The Isles of Shoals loomed, lonely and dim, | 25 |
| In the northeast distance far and gray, | |
| And on the horizon’s uttermost rim | |
| The low rock heap of Boone Island lay. | |
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| And north and south and west and east | |
| Stretched sea and land in the blinding light, | 30 |
| Till evening fell, and her vigil ceased, | |
| And many a hearth-glow lit the night, | |
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| To mock those set and glittering eyes | |
| Fast growing wild as her hope went out. | |
| Hateful seemed earth, and the hollow skies, | 35 |
| Like her own heart, empty of aught but doubt. | |
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| Oh, but the weary, merciless days, | |
| With the sun above, with the sea afar,— | |
| No change in her fixed and wistful gaze | |
| From the morning-red to the evening star! | 40 |
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| Oh, the winds that blew, and the birds that sang, | |
| The calms that smiled, and the storms that rolled, | |
| The bells from the town beneath, that rang | |
| Through the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold! | |
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| The flash of the plunging surges white, | 45 |
| The soaring gull’s wild boding cry, | |
| She was weary of all; there was no delight | |
| In heaven or earth, and she longed to die. | |
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| What was it to her though the Dawn should paint | |
| With delicate beauty skies and seas? | 50 |
| But the sweet, sad sunset splendors faint | |
| Made her soul sick with memories: | |
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| Drowning in sorrowful purple a sail | |
| In the distant east, where shadows grew, | |
| Till the twilight shrouded it, cold and pale, | 55 |
| And the tide of her anguish rose anew. | |
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| Like a slender statue carved of stone | |
| She sat, with hardly motion or breath. | |
| She wept no tears and she made no moan, | |
| But her love was stronger than life or death. | 60 |
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| He never came back! Yet faithful still, | |
| She watched from the hill-top her life away. | |
| And the townsfolk christened it Heartbreak Hill, | |
| And it bears the name to this very day. | |
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