那是赫斯伯罗斯号纵帆船，在寒冷的海面上航行;船长带着他的小女儿，陪伴着他。她的眼睛像仙女的亚麻一样蓝，她的脸颊像黎明的曙光，她的胸脯像五月开放的山楂花蕾一样白。船长他站在舵旁，嘴里叼着烟斗，他注视着那转向的裂缝如何把烟吹得忽西忽南。这时，一个老水手说，他已经航行到西班牙大陆了，我请求你到那边的港口去，因为我怕有飓风。“昨天晚上，月亮有一个金戒指，今晚我们看不到月亮”船长，他吹了一口烟斗，轻蔑地笑了起来。风吹得更冷更响了，从东北方向刮来的大风，雪在盐水中嘶嘶作响，海浪像酵母一样冒着泡沫。风暴来了，猛烈地拍打着船;她像一匹受惊的骏马，颤栗着停了下来，然后跳脱了缆绳。“到这儿来，到这儿来，我的小女儿，不要这样发抖; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast. 'O fatherl I hear the church-bells ring, Oh say, what may it be?' "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coasti"- And he steered for the open sea. 'O fathert I hear the sound of guns, Oh say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!" 'O fatherl I see a gleaming light, Oh say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the hclm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Tbrougb the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the bard sea-sand. Ile breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And be saw her bair, like the brown seaweed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norinan's Woel