Broad meadows reaching seaward the tided creeks between,
And hills rolled, wave-like, inland, with oaks and walnuts green:
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eye had never seen.
Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread
To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead!
All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky at midnight its starry lights denied,
And, far and low, the thunder of tempest prophesied.
Blotted out was all the coast-line, gone were rock and wood and sand;
Grimly anxious stood the helmsman with the tiller in his hand,
And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.
And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore:
"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before
To the pleasant land of Heaven, where the sea shall be no more!"
All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside,
To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide;
And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.
There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,
And through it all the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.
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