"Well, then, you'll taste my honey and my bread?" The Soldier said, and from his cot he brought Seats for the strangers; him the damsel helped, Bearing the bread and honey; and they ate, The damsel serving, and she ate in turn. When various talk had closed the simple feast, The strangers rose to go: "My head! my head!" The sailor cried, and fell in sudden pangs. They bore and laid him on the Soldier's bed. Forth ran the lass, and from the neighbouring town Brought the physician; but his skill was vain, For God had touched him, and the man must die. His mind was clear: "Give me that cross, my child, That I may kiss it ere my spirit part," He said. And from her breast the damsel drew A little cross, peculiar shaped and wrought, And gave it him. It caught the Soldier's eye And when the girl received it back, he took And looked at it.
"This cross, O dying man, Was round my daughter's neck, when in the deep She perished from me, on that fatal night The 'Sphinx' was burnt, forth sailing from the Clyde. Her dying mother round the infant's neck This holy symbol, with her blessing, hung. Friendless at home, I took my only child, Bound to the Western World, where we had friends. Scarce out of port, up flamed our ship on fire, With crowding terrors through the umbered night. O! what a shout of joy, when through the gloom That walled us round within our glaring vault, Spectral and large, we saw the ships of help. Our boats were lowered; the first, o'ercrowded, swamped; Down to the second, as it lurched away, I flung my child: the monstrous waves went by With backs like blood: the sudden-shifting boat Is off with one, another has my babe. I sprung to save her--all the rest is drear, Grisly confusion, till I found me laid, On some far island, in a fisher's hut. Me, as they homeward scudded past the fire, Those lonely farmers of the deep picked up, Floating away, and rubbed to vital heat; And through the fever-gulf that had me next, With simple love they brought my weary life. The shores and islands round, for lingering news Of people saved from off that burning wreck, O! how I haunted then; but of my child No man had heard. Hopeless, and naked poor, To war I rushed. This cot received me next; And here, I trust, my mortal chapter ends. But say, O say! how came you by this cross?"