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Title: The Story Of The Birkenhead
Author: Dinah M. Mulock Craik [
More Titles by Craik]
TOLD TO TWO CHILDREN
AND so you want a fairy tale,
My little maidens twain?
Well, sit beside the waterfall,
Noisy with last night's rain;
On couch of moss, with elfin spears
Bristling, all fierce to see,
When from the yet brown moor down drops
The lonely April bee.
All the wide valley blushes green,
While, in far depths below,
Wharfe flashes out a great bright eye,
Then hides his shining flow;--
Wharfe, busy, restless, rapid Wharfe,
The glory of our dale;
O I could of the River Wharfe
Tell such a fairy tale!
"The Boy of Egremond," you cry,--
"And all the 'bootless bene:'
We know that poem, every word,
And we the Strid have seen."
No, clever damsels: though the tale
Seems still to bear a part,
In every lave of Wharfe's bright wave,
The broken mother's heart--
Little you know of broken hearts,
My Kitty, blithe and wise,
Grave Mary, with the woman soul
Dawning through childish eyes.
And long, long distant may God keep
The day when each shall know
The entrance to His kingdom through
His baptism of woe!
But yet 'tis good to hear of grief
Which He permits to be;
Even as in our green inland home
We talk of wrecks at sea.
So on this lovely day, when spring
Wakes soft o'er moor and dale,
I'll tell--not quite your wish--but yet
A noble "fairy" tale.
* * * * *
'Twas six o'clock in the morning,
The sea like crystal lay,
When the good troop-ship Birkenhead
Set sail from Simon's Bay.
The Cape of Good Hope on her right
Gloomed at her through the noon:
Brief tropic twilight fled, and night
Fell suddenly and soon.
At eight o'clock in the evening
Dim grew the pleasant land;
O'er smoothest seas the southern heaven
Its starry arch out-spanned.
The soldiers on the bulwarks leaned,
Smoked, chatted; and below
The soldiers' wives sang babes to sleep,
While on the ship sailed slow.
Six hundred and thirty souls held she,
Good, bad, old, young, rich, poor;
Six hundred and thirty living souls--
God knew them all.--Secure
He counted them in His right hand,
That held the hungering seas;
And to four hundred came a voice--
"The Master hath need of these."
* * * * *
On, onward, still the vessel went
Till, with a sudden shock,
Like one that's clutched by unseen Death,
She struck upon a rock.
She filled. Not hours, not minutes left;
Each second a life's gone:
Drowned in their berths, washed overboard,
Lost, swimming, one by one;
Till, o'er this chaos of despair
Rose, like celestial breath,
The law of order, discipline,
Obedience unto death.
The soldiers mustered upon deck,
As mute as on parade;
"Women and children to the boats!"
And not a man gainsayed.
Without a murmur or a moan
They stood, formed rank and file,
Between the dreadful crystal seas
And the sky's dreadful smile.
In face of death they did their work
As they in life would do,
Embarking at a quiet quay--
A quiet, silent crew.
"Now each man for himself. To the boats!"
Arose a passing cry.
The soldier-captain answered, "Swamp
The women and babes?--No, die!"
And so they died. Each in his place,
Obedient to command,
They went down with the sinking ship,
Went down in sight of land.
The great sea oped her mouth, and closed
O'er them. Awhile they trod
The valley of the shadow of death,
And then were safe with God.
* * * * *
My little girlies--What! your tears
Are dropping on the grass,
Over my more than "fairy" tale,
A tale that "really was!"
Nay, dry them. If we could but see
The joy in angels' eyes
O'er good lives, or heroic deaths
Of pure self-sacrifice,--
We should not weep o'er these that sleep--
Their short, sharp struggle o'er--
Under the rolling waves that break
Upon the Afric shore.
God works not as man works, nor sees
As man sees: though we mark
Ofttimes the moving of His hands
Beneath the eternal Dark.
But yet we know that all is well
That He, who loved all these,
Loves children laughing on the moor,
Birds singing in the trees;
That He who made both life and death,
He knoweth which is best:
We live to Him, we die to Him,
And leave Him all the rest.
[The end]
Dinah M. Mulock Craik's poem: Story Of The Birkenhead
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