Glee! the great storm is over! Four have recovered the land ; Forty gone down together Into the boiling sand. Ring, for the scant salvation! Toll, for the bonnie souls, - Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, Spinning upon the shoals ! How they will tell the shipwreck When winter shakes the door, Till the children ask, "But the forty? Did they come back no more?" Then a silence suffuses the story, And a softness the teller's eye; And the children no further question, And only the waves reply. |