First Islander LOOK out! look out! on the waves so dark, | |
| And tell me dost thou see a bark | |
| Riding the tempest through? | |
| It bears a cross on its slender spar, | |
| And a lamp that glances like a star, | 5 |
| And three men make the crew! | |
| |
Second Islander I see a bark far off at sea, | |
| With cross and lamp and crew of three, | |
| But sooth it labors sore; | |
| I see it rise, I see it fall, | 10 |
| Now the angry ocean swallows all, | |
| And I see the bark no more. | |
| |
First Islander ’T is he! ’t is he! I know his sail,— | |
| ’T is the holy man of the distant Gael, | |
| True to his plighted word,— | 15 |
| “Be ’t storm or calm, or foul or fair,” | |
| He said, “I will be surely there | |
| On the birthday of our Lord!” | |
| |
| He is the saint whose hymn soars loud | |
| O’er shifting sail and crackling shroud; | 20 |
| Who resteth on his oar | |
| In the summer midnight’s silent hour | |
| May haply hear that voice of power | |
| O’er Coryvrekan’s roar. | |
| |
| He knoweth how to steer aright, | 25 |
| By the yard, and plough, and northern light, | |
| Through the battling Shetland Seas,— | |
| Knoweth of every port the sign | |
| From Westra to Saint Columb’s shrine | |
| In the southern Hebrides. | 30 |
| |
| A host will throng to cape and bay | |
| To meet him each appointed day, | |
| Be it festival or fast, | |
| And if his bark comes not in sight | |
| They deem they have not reckoned right, | 35 |
| Or that the day is past. | |
| |
| His psalm hath wakened Osmunwall, | |
| And from the cavern of Fingall | |
| Hath shaken down the spar; | |
| The fishers on the midnight waves, | 40 |
| And the otter-hunters from their caves | |
| Salute his cross and star. | |
| |
Second Islander I see, I see through the nightfall dark | |
| Saint Cormac sitting in his bark, | |
| And now he draweth near! | 45 |
| Dear Father of the island men, | |
| Welcome to Wallis’ Isle again, | |
| And to our Christmas cheer! | |
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