The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

Erelong a jollyboat was lowered
Beneath the stranger's quarterboard,
A portly craft of heavy jowl,
Exceeding like the famous bowl
Wherein the trustful Gotham sages
Went grandly down to future ages.

Next Downing spied four sailors glide
Aslant the galleon's bellied side,
And after them the lordly chief
Who lately signalled him relief;
Then saw them feather oars and urge
Their rolling shallop o'er the surge

174

Until it smote his sunken rail,
No ghostly bark of vapors pale,
But stiff with oak and clinker mail.

No phantoms, either, were the rowers,
But stalwart as their ashen oars;
And he who bore the ostrich plume
Had surely never known the tomb;
For, leaping to the wreck, he strode
With sounding steps in mortal mode.

A man he was, in blood and bone;
A very man, right nobly grown;
His visage flushed with younker health;
His glances azure; while a wealth
Of curling sunshine overhung
His ivory brow and signed him young.