Index of poems / Stories and Poems write-up
Robert Southey (1820).
Inchcape Rock
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 flow’d over the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape
Bell.
The Abbot of
Aberbrothok
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 blest the Abbot of
Aberbrothok
The Sun in the
heaven was shining gay,
All things were joyful on that day;
The
sea-birds scream’d as they wheel’d round,
And there was joyaunce in their
sound.
The buoy of
the Inchcpe Bell was seen
A darker speck on the ocean green;
Sir Ralph
the Rover walk’d his deck,
And fix’d his eye on the darker speck.
He felt the
cheering power of spring,
It made him whistle, it made him sing;
His
heart was mirthful to excess,
But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness.
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 Aberbrothok.”
The boat is
lower’d, 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 rose and burst around;
Quoth Sir
Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock,
Won’t bless the Abbot of
Aberbrothok.”
Sir Ralph the
Rover sail’d away,
He scour’d the seas for many a day;
And now grown
rich with plunder’d store,
He steers his course for 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.
On the deck
the Rover takes his stand,
So dark it is they see no land.
Quoth Sir
Ralph, “It will be lighter soon,
For there is the dawn of the rising Moon.”
“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 we 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,
“Oh Christ! It is the
Inchcape Rock!”
Sir Ralph the
Rover tore his hair,
He curst himself in his despair;
The waves rush in
on every side,
The ship is sinking beneath the tide.
But even is
his dying fear,
One dreadful sound could the Rover hear;
A sound as if
with the Inchcape Bell,
The Devil below was ringing his knell.