Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.
Tales of a Wayside InnPart Second. The Musician’s Tale: The Ballad of Carmilhan
Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer’s day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
The good ship Valdemar.
And played along her side;
And through the cabin windows streamed
In ripples of golden light, that seemed
The ripple of the tide.
Old skippers brown and hale,
Who smoked and grumbled o’er their grog,
And talked of iceberg and of fog,
Of calm and storm and gale.
About Klaboterman,
The Kobold of the sea; a spright
Invisible to mortal sight,
Who o’er the rigging ran.
Sometimes upon the mast,
Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft,
Or at the bows he sang and laughed,
And made all tight and fast.
And toiled with jovial din;
He helped them hoist and reef the sails,
He helped them stow the casks and bales,
And heave the anchor in.
The idlers of the crew;
Them to torment was his delight,
And worry them by day and night,
And pinch them black and blue.
Klaboterman behold.
It is a certain sign of death!—
The cabin-boy here held his breath,
He felt his blood run cold.
And then again began;
“There is a Spectre Ship,” quoth he,
“A ship of the Dead that sails the sea,
And is called the Carmilhan.
In tempests she appears;
And before the gale, or against the gale,
She sails without a rag of sail,
Without a helmsman steers.
But mostly the mid-sea,
Where three great rocks rise bleak and bare
Like furnace chimneys in the air,
And are called the Chimneys Three.
That meets the Carmilhan;
Over her decks the seas will leap,
She must go down into the deep,
And perish mouse and man.”
Laughed loud with merry heart.
“I should like to see this ship,” said he;
“I should like to find these Chimneys Three
That are marked down in the chart.
“With a good stiff breeze behind,
When the sea was blue, and the sky was clear,—
You can follow my course by these pinholes here,—
And never a rock could find.”
He swore by the Kingdoms Three,
That, should he meet the Carmilhan,
He would run her down, although he ran
Right into Eternity!
The cabin-boy had heard;
He lingered at the door to hear,
And drank in all with greedy ear,
And pondered every word.
But of a roving mind.
“Oh, it must be like heaven,” thought he,
“Those far-off foreign lands to see,
And fortune seek and find!”
The mariners blaspheme,
He thought of home, he thought of God,
And his mother under the churchyard sod,
And wished it were a dream.
’T was the Klaboterman,
Who saw the Bible in his chest,
And made a sign upon his breast,
All evil things to ban.
As eyeballs of the dead;
No more the glancing sunbeams burn
On the gilt letters of the stern,
But on the figure-head;
Who looketh with disdain
To see his image in the tide
Dismembered float from side to side,
And reunite again.
“That swings the vessel so;
It is the wind; it freshens fast,
’T is time to say farewell at last,
’T is time for us to go.”
“Good luck! good luck!” they cried;
Each face was like the setting sun,
As, broad and red, they one by one
Went o’er the vessel’s side.
Serene o’er field and flood;
And all the winding creeks and bays
And broad sea-meadows seemed ablaze,
The sky was red as blood.
As fair as wind could be;
Bound for Odessa, o’er the bar,
With all sail set, the Valdemar
Went proudly out to sea.
As one who walks in dreams;
A tower of marble in her light,
A wall of black, a wall of white,
The stately vessel seems.
The lights begin to burn;
And now, uplifted high in air,
They kindle with a fiercer glare,
And now drop far astern.
The sea is all around;
Then on each hand low hills of sand
Emerge and form another land;
She steereth through the Sound.
She flitteth like a ghost;
By day and night, by night and day,
She bounds, she flies upon her way
Along the English coast.
Cape Finisterre is past;
Into the open ocean stream
She floats, the vision of a dream
Too beautiful to last.
There is no land in sight;
The liquid planets overhead
Burn brighter now the moon is dead,
And longer stays the night.
Mountains of cloud uprose,
Black as with forests underneath,
Above, their sharp and jagged teeth
Were white as drifted snows.
But flushed each snowy peak
A little while with rosy light,
That faded slowly from the sight
As blushes from the cheek.
The clouds were everywhere;
There was a feeling of suspense
In nature, a mysterious sense
Of terror in the air.
Was still as still could be;
Save when the dismal ship-bell tolled,
As ever and anon she rolled,
And lurched into the sea.
Went striding to and fro;
Now watched the compass at the wheel,
Now lifted up his hand to feel
Which way the wind might blow.
And now upon the deep;
In every fibre of his frame
He felt the storm before it came,
He had no thought of sleep.
With a great rush of rain,
Making the ocean white with spume,
In darkness like the day of doom,
On came the hurricane.
And rent the sky in two;
A jagged flame, a single jet
Of white fire, like a bayonet,
That pierced the eyeballs through.
And blacker than before;
But in that single flash of light
He had beheld a fearful sight,
And thought of the oath he swore.
The ghostly Carmilhan!
Her masts were stripped, her yards were bare,
And on her bowsprit, poised in air,
Sat the Klaboterman.
Or clambering up the shrouds;
The boatswain’s whistle, the captain’s hail
Were like the piping of the gale,
And thunder in the clouds.
There rose up from the sea,
As from a foundered ship of stone,
Three bare and splintered masts alone:
They were the Chimneys Three.
And leaped into the dark;
A denser mist, a colder blast,
A little shudder, and she had passed
Right through the Phantom Bark.
But cleft it unaware;
As when, careering to her nest,
The sea-gull severs with her breast
The unresisting air.
They saw the Carmilhan,
Whole as before in hull and spar;
But now on board of the Valdemar
Stood the Klaboterman.
They knew that death was near;
Some prayed who never prayed before,
And some they wept, and some they swore,
And some were mute with fear.
And louder than wind or sea
A cry burst from the crew on deck,
As she dashed and crashed, a hopeless wreck,
Upon the Chimneys Three.
To streak the east began;
The cabin-boy, picked up at sea,
Survived the wreck, and only he,
To tell of the Carmilhan.