No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be;Her sails from heaven received no motion, Her keel was steady in the ocean.
Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell,They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
The worthy Abbot of Aberbrothock
Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung.
When the rock was hid by the surge"s swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell; And then they knew the perilous rock, And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothock.
The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen, A darker speck on the ocean green;Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck,
And he fixed his eye on the darker speck.
His eye was on the Inchcape float; Quoth he, "My men, put out the boat, And row me to the Inchcape Rock,And I"ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothock."
The boat is lowered; the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go;Sir Ralph bent over from the boat,
And he cut the bell from the Inchcape float.
Down sank the bell with a gurgling sound; The bubbles arose and burst around.
Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to this rock Will not bless the Abbot of Aberbrothock."Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away;
He scoured the seas for many a day;
And now, grown rich with plundered store,
He steers his course to Scotland"s shore.
So thick a haze o"erspreads the sky They cannot see the sun on high; The wind hath blown a gale all day; At evening, it hath died away.
"Canst hear," said one, " the breakers roar, For methinks we should be near the shore? Now where we are I cannot tell,But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell!"
They hear no sound, the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock- O heavens! It is the Inchcape Rock!
Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; He cursed himself in his despair; The waves rush in on every side: The ship is sinking beneath the tide!
But even in his dying fear
One dreadful sound could the Rover hear- A sound as if with the Inchcape BellThe fiends below were ringing his knell.
- Robert Southey
Author.-Robert Southey (1774-1843), is chiefly read to-day in certain of his shorter pieces, though some of his longer poems-Roderick the Goth, The Curse of Kehama, and the Tale of Paraguay-contain some remarkably fine things. Queen Orraca, a romantic ballad, Jasper, a poem of peasant life, and The Surgeon"s Funeral, an attempt at the grimly grotesque, are well worth reading.
General Notes.-This is a good example of the ballad or story- poem. Inchcape Rock, a dangerous rock some miles from the coast of Forfarshire, Scotland. The Bell Rock lighthouse now stands upon it. (The building of this lighthouse is well told by Ballantyne in a book for boys, entitled The Lighthouse.) The name " Inch" means island. Aberbrothock (mouth of the Brothock), formerly the name for Arbroath, a seaport and manufacturing town in Forfarshire, eastern Scotland. The Bell Rock is 12 miles from the town. This story divides itself into two parts, the Crime and the Punishment. Why did the pirate wish to plague the priest? Did his punishment fit the crime?