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 | A thousand more verses |  |
Nought, nought but the heart can e'r picture the agonies known and unknown,
That throng through the night's desolation, with horrors unspeakable strown:
The wrenching from halls of the banquet, to roofs of the desolate wave;
The wearisome watching for rescue, to come from the far-distant brave;
The crushing of new-made devices that serve not to save, but to kill,
The life-boats that turn into death-boats, for lacking of seamanship skill;
The hurried and agonized partings that come with this terrible doom,
And shroud the sweet love of a lifetime by changing the sea to a tomb;
The cry of the child for its parent, the wife's and the husband's vain call,
The prayers of the righteous invoking the aid of the Father of all;
The fragile flotillas with women too brave their own sorrow to tell,
Like slaves at the galley-oars toiling, still hoping that all will be well;
The grief of the half-thousand toilers who, prisoned with clinging bolts nigh,
Have nought they can do for escaping except in that prison to die;
The tremulous strains of musicians, who, just from the pleasure-hall's glare,
Creep “Nearer to God”, when around them are dancing the ghosts of despair;
The cries of the maimed and the dying, who languish o'er death-beds of waves,
On ruins of yesterday's splendor that soon are to dig them their graves;
That throng through the night's desolation, with horrors unspeakable strown:
The wrenching from halls of the banquet, to roofs of the desolate wave;
The wearisome watching for rescue, to come from the far-distant brave;
The crushing of new-made devices that serve not to save, but to kill,
The life-boats that turn into death-boats, for lacking of seamanship skill;
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And shroud the sweet love of a lifetime by changing the sea to a tomb;
The cry of the child for its parent, the wife's and the husband's vain call,
The prayers of the righteous invoking the aid of the Father of all;
The fragile flotillas with women too brave their own sorrow to tell,
Like slaves at the galley-oars toiling, still hoping that all will be well;
The grief of the half-thousand toilers who, prisoned with clinging bolts nigh,
Have nought they can do for escaping except in that prison to die;
The tremulous strains of musicians, who, just from the pleasure-hall's glare,
Creep “Nearer to God”, when around them are dancing the ghosts of despair;
The cries of the maimed and the dying, who languish o'er death-beds of waves,
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