The Shrieking Woman At Marblehead

    'Twas a Spanish galleon sailed the seas, -
        Two centuries since have rolled -
    Laden with silver and gems to please
        Gay dames and gallants bold.

    But villainous pirates seized the ship
        As homeward she was bound;
    Ah, she has made her last long trip
        For they ran her soon aground.

    From Oakum Bay into Marblehead
        They brought one lady fair, -
    Her husband, alas, and his crew are dead,
        And her they will not spare.

    Loud, loud she shrieked in the pirates' arms,
        "Oh, save me - Jesu, save!"
    Cruel echo mocked at her wild alarms,
        As they dug her a nameless grave.

    Yet once a year when the night has come
        That saw her dreadful death,
    You can hear her above the ocean's boom
        Shriek out with her dying breath.

Helen Leah Reed

Helen Leah Reed (1860-1926) was an American author and poet, renowned for her contributions to children's literature and her historical novels. She was an influential literary figure of her time, often remembered for her stories that blended education with entertainment. Reed's works reflected her deep knowledge and interest in history, making her a notable figure in early 20th-century American literature.

Helen Leah Reed

Song Of Spring

Helen Leah Reed, Simple Poetry

To Mrs. Julia Ward Howe

Helen Leah Reed, Simple Poetry

The Huguenot Lovers

Helen Leah Reed, Simple Poetry

If Love Were All

Helen Leah Reed, Simple Poetry

English

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The Wreck Of The Hesperus

It was the schooner Hesperus,
    That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
    To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
    Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
    That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
    His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
    The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
    Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
    For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
    And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
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The Cruise of the In Memoriam

The wan light of a stormy dawn
Gleamed on a tossing ship:
It was the In Memoriam
Upon a mourning trip.

Wild waves were on the windward bow,
And breakers on the lee;
And through her sides the women heard
The seething of the sea.

O Captain! cried a widow fair,
Her plump white hands clasped she,
Thinkst thou, if drowned in this dread storm,
That savèd we shall be?

You speak in riddles, lady dear,
How savèd can we be
If we are drowned? Alas, I mean
In Paradise! said she.

O Ive sailed North, and Ive sailed South
(He was a godless wight),
But boy or man, since my days began,
That shore I neer did sight!

The Captain told the First Mate bold
What that fair lady said;
The First Mate sneered in h...

Victor James Daley

The "Alice Jean".

One moonlit night a ship drove in,
    A ghost ship from the west,
Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller,
    Like a mermaid drest
In long green weed and barnacles:
    She beached and came to rest.

All the watchers of the coast
    Flocked to view the sight,
Men and women streaming down
    Through the summer night,
Found her standing tall and ragged
    Beached in the moonlight.

Then one old woman looked and wept
    "The 'Alice Jean'?    But no!
The ship that took my Dick from me
    Sixty years ago
Drifted back from the utmost west
    With the ocean's flow?

"Caught and caged in the weedy pool
    Beyond the western brink,
Where crewless vessels lie and rot
    in waters black as ink.
Torn out again by a su...

Robert von Ranke Graves

Unrecorded.

The splendors of a southern sun
    Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
    And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
    And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul--
    Whose glory none can tell.

Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
    Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the flames
    From heavenly fires above.
Unto the water's edge they creep
    And bathe the seas in red;
Then die like shadows on the deep
    With glory cold and dead.

A ship--a lone, dark wanderer
    Upon the southern seas,
Speeds like a white-faced messenger
    Before the dying breeze.
Her masts are tipped with amethyst,
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A crimson mantle wraps h...

Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

The Bay Of Seven Islands

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,
Down the long valley of the Merrimac,
Midway between me and the river's mouth,
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,
Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,
Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,
The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays
Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade
Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan
Of the South Breaker prophesy...

John Greenleaf Whittier

After A Lecture On Shelley

One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay
On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I
The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away;
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea;
Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns;
Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee!
Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns.

And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands,
And torches flaring in the weedy caves,
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands
The shapes uplifted from their coral graves.

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er;
The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks,
And lean, wild children gather from the shore
To the black hovels bedded in the rocks.

But Love still prayed, with agoni...

Oliver Wendell Holmes