Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By John Gardiner CalkinsBrainard

111 Mr. Merry’s Lament for “Long Tom”

THY cruise is over now,

Thou art anchored by the shore,

And never more shalt thou

Hear the storm around thee roar;

Death has shaken out the sands of thy glass.

Now around thee sports the whale,

And the porpoise snuffs the gale,

And the night-winds wake their wail,

As they pass.

The sea-grass round thy bier

Shall bend beneath the tide,

Nor tell the breakers near

Where thy manly limbs abide;

But the granite rock thy tombstone shall be.

Though the edges of thy grave

Are the combings of the wave—

Yet unheeded they shall rave

Over thee.

At the piping of all hands,

When the judgment signal’s spread—

When the islands, and the lands,

And the seas give up their dead,

And the south and the north shall come;

When the sinner is dismayed,

And the just man is afraid,

Then heaven be thy aid,

Poor Tom.