The Life Savers

The storm comes down in the utter dark
    Like a corsair hunting a fated barque;
The midnight coast rings dismally to the ponderous shock on shock,
Where the titans forge their thunders on the anvil of the rock!
Ha! now is the hour for action, the test of my hardy braves.
Who pluck the pearl of honor from the dash of maddened waves:
    For dimly seen through the night and storm
    A red flame pictures a fearful form.–
Three masts aslant, with their groaning shrouds,
    Where cling the shuddering “tars”
And the shredded sails that lash the clouds,
    And snap with the rocking spars:

God speed the brave deliverers, for sooth the need for sure!
With boat and oar and cordage they rush to the desolate shore,
The light of home behind them and the breakers’ gleam before.
    Accepting the challenge of Doom
    They are six against measureless gloom
Against the voluminous folds of the dragon wave, whose his
Is the last, thin treble of scorn in the roar of the raging abyss!

True hearts as ever were born, they answer scorn for scorn.
Not a soul from the peril shrinks with fear;
While burrying bands with hardy hands
Pile high the driftwood over the sands.
Fooling its many-hued flames to cheer
The half-despairing mariner with the hope of succor near.
    They spring to the life boat; bowed are fear
    On the midship thwarts with the balanced oar.
While two, waist deep in the swirling brine,
    Stand firmly to hold her on even keel.
     Till she swings afloat, with a slender line
    Trailed aft from a shoreman’s loaded reel;
    Then in they bound as the backward slide
    Of the spend wave hurls them on the tide.
And “Steady! steady!” with measured beat the tough white ash is plied;
Though oft flung back on the crest of a soothing wave
    They win from the bowling waters inch by inch:
The gulfs below them are blacker than the grave.
    And yawn to the centre, yet never a man will flinch!
Their boat like a lashing saurian heaves the insulting billow off.
Now high on its curling summit, now deep in its gloomy trough;
    So battling on they fare, till, hark! they are aware
    Of a tremulous voice from on high
“Hurrah!” “Thank God!” is the mingled cry
Dropped suddenly down from the turbulent sky,
Where the spars lean out from the fatal cliff
And seem to beckon the bounding skiff.
And she answers back with a hoarse “Aye! aye!
Ahoy there, Wreck! for a line, stand by!”
Like a swift lasso to the light line cast 
    From the steerman’s hand to a fist so brown;
It is knotted fast to the staunchest mast,
And soon as a frightful wave has passed,
    In a moment’s lull the men glide down,
And are caught by the rescuers one by one
‘Twixt the swing of the seas and that wild trapeze
In a perilous flight as o’er was flown!
Then the life boat speeds with its double freight!
    Hurled home like a shaft from a giant’s bow.
    Far up the dunes as the mad waves got
While the crew who wait in the shrouds, debate
Whether they who go, or these who stay, shall meet the kinder fate.

By the slender line that threads the brine,
A stout hemp hawser is drawn from the land
And lo, the boiling chasm is spanned
By a wavering bridge, like a single strand
    Of a spider’s net, and along it glides
A hollow car, a close-shut cell —
Cradle or coffin the fates may tell,
    As fares this voyager with who rides!

One after another they all embark
In the breathless dark of that narrow-ark.
And are dragged through the baffled waves unwet;
Now safe by the blazing fire they stand,
Or kneel to Heaven in the drifted sand,
Where rescued and rescuers all have met
Through perils none shall o’er forget:
The sailor swears and the landsman prays,
And both thank God in their differing ways!