The Skull In the Grass

    So round and white, in the tangled grass,
    It questions me, and I cannot pass.

    "Now who art thou, so bluff and so brave,
    Without a thought of the quiet grave?
    We sailed from Hull in a seventy-four,
    My mate and I and three hundred more.
    We took as a prize a Spanish ship;
    To the fleet of the French we gave the slip.
    A storm came down full of wind and hail;
    It smote the sea like an iron flail.
    With a forward lurch and a grinding shock,
    The vessel struck on a sunken rock;
    Her men and her guns and her gaping sides
    Swept by the rush of the swinging tides.
    From the icy shrouds we slipped and fell
    Down to our graves without priest or knell.
    Now go! and, perchance, may come for thee
    A death as brave in the angry sea."

    So spoke the skull in the tangled grass,
    When it questioned me, and I could not pass.

        Newton Marshall Hall