Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
St. Cormac the Navigator
By Thomas DArcy McGee (18251868)And tell me dost thou see a bark
Riding the tempest through?
It bears a cross on its slender spar,
And a lamp that glances like a star,
And three men make the crew!
With cross and lamp and crew of three,
But sooth it labors sore;
I see it rise, I see it fall,
Now the angry ocean swallows all,
And I see the bark no more.
’T is the holy man of the distant Gael,
True to his plighted word,—
“Be ’t storm or calm, or foul or fair,”
He said, “I will be surely there
On the birthday of our Lord!”
O’er shifting sail and crackling shroud;
Who resteth on his oar
In the summer midnight’s silent hour
May haply hear that voice of power
O’er Coryvrekan’s roar.
By the yard, and plough, and northern light,
Through the battling Shetland Seas,—
Knoweth of every port the sign
From Westra to Saint Columb’s shrine
In the southern Hebrides.
To meet him each appointed day,
Be it festival or fast,
And if his bark comes not in sight
They deem they have not reckoned right,
Or that the day is past.
And from the cavern of Fingall
Hath shaken down the spar;
The fishers on the midnight waves,
And the otter-hunters from their caves
Salute his cross and star.
Saint Cormac sitting in his bark,
And now he draweth near!
Dear Father of the island men,
Welcome to Wallis’ Isle again,
And to our Christmas cheer!