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THE CRIMSON AND WHITE
"Oh father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, Whiterabbit (what may it) be?"
"Some shop in Dresher (distress) that cannot Lynn (live)
Imig (in) such an angry sea!"
"O father! CeCelia (I see a) gleaming light,
O say, Whiterabbit be?"
But the father Anderson (answered) never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his Feutz (face) turned to the skies,
The Lewerenz (lantern) gleamed through the Glenn-ing
(gleaming) snow
On his fixed and glass eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her Haines (hands) and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the Dave (wave),
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the Mildred (midnight) dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and Stelloh (snow),
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the Ruth (reef) of Northup's (Norman's) Wall
(Woe).
And Edna (ever) the fitful guts DeWayne (between),
A sound came from Leland (the land);
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard Mary Ann (sea sand).
The breakers were right Bernice (beneath) her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her Deutsch (deck).
She struck when the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as Clara-ed (carded) wool,
But the cruel rocks, they Grow-ed (gored) her side
Like the horns of any angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all Schield (sheathed) in ice,
Wilbur (with the) masts went by board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove Zajac (and sank).
Ho! ho! the breakers Roy-ed (roared).
At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a Marian (maiden) fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt-sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the Brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hoepner,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the Ruth of Northup's Wall!
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