Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Bude Haven

A Croon on Hennacliff

By Robert Stephen Hawker (1803–1875)

THUS said the rushing raven

Unto his hungry mate,—

“Ho! gossip! for Bude Haven:

There be corpses six or eight.

Cawk! cawk! the crew and skipper

Are wallowing in the sea:

So there ’s a savory supper

For my old dame and me.”

“Cawk! gaffer! thou art dreaming,

The shore hath wreckers bold;

Would rend the yelling seamen,

From the clutching billows hold.

Cawk! cawk! they ’d bound for booty

Into the dragon’s den:

And shout, for ‘death or duty,’

If the prey were drowning men.”

Loud laughed the listening surges

At the guess our grandame gave:

You might call them Boanerges,

From the thunder of their wave.

And mockery followed after

The sea-bird’s jeering brood:

That filled the skies with laughter,

From Lundy Light to Bude.

“Cawk! cawk!” then said the raven,

“I am fourscore years and ten,

Yet never in Bude Haven

Did I croak for rescued men.—

They will save the captain’s girdle,

And shirt, if shirt there be;

But leave their blood to curdle

For my old dame and me.”

So said the rushing raven

Unto his hungry mate,—

“Ho! gossip! for Bude Haven:

There be corpses six or eight.

Cawk! cawk! the crew and skipper

Are wallowing in the sea:

O, what a savory supper

For my old dame and me.”