"O never will that ship come home,
Wherever she be sailing from;
I warmed my hands beneath the stars,
By a fire made of her broken spars.
"And three days dead the Captain lay,
But how he died no man may say:
I laid him out by the pale moon-rise,
And made a shroud of the 'broideries.
"With coral and gold I weighted him,
And still he was light enough to swim,
With silver chains I bound him down,
There was never a corpse so hard to drown.
"His black hair lines an eagle's nest
On a sea girt cliff in the lonesome west;
Now, jet for coral there must be,
And instead of amber, ebony."
7
