C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Frances Freeling Broderip (1830–1878)

THE FIERCE wind drove o’er hedgerow and lea,

It bowed the grasses, it broke the tree,—

It shivered the topmost branch of the tree!

And it buried my love in the deep, deep sea,

In the dark lone grave of the hungry sea,—

Woe is me!

The bonnie white daisy closed her e’e,

And bent to the blast that swept the lea.

Blossom and grass bowed low on the lea,

But white sails dipped and sank in the sea;

They dipped and sank in the pitiless sea!

Woe is me!

’Neath the mother’s breast in the leafy tree

Nestled and crept her birdies wee,

Nor heeded the blast, though weak and wee.

But no mother can save on the stormy sea;

Deaf to her cry is the merciless sea!

Woe is me!

Oh, well for the fishers of Galilee,

When they left their nets by that inland sea,

To follow Him who walked on the sea;

At whose word the pitiless waves did flee—

The hungry, insatiate waves did flee,

And left them free!

Golden the light on flower and tree

In the land where my sailor waits for me,—

The country of heaven that has no sea—

No ruthless, moaning, terrible sea;

There is the haven where I would be.