Page 227 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

Its side is gored, for the sea to have way through—
" I t is over!" they cried. “ We have done all men may do;
Yet there's one chance IcJl!” aild themselves they threw

Right into the wrath of the sea and the wind!
It rages all around them, before and behind.
Their ears are deafened; their eyes are blind.

Then in the middlemost hell of the night,
Yea, in the innermost heart of the fight,
They strain and struggle with all their might—

With never a pause, while God's mercy they cry on,
Their teeth are set, and their muscles are iron-—
Kach man has die heart and the thews of a lion.

Wave spurns them to wave. They may do it! Who knows
For shoreward the great tide towering goes,
And shoreward the great wind thundering blows.

But, no! See that wave, like a Fate bearing onl
It breaks them and passes. Two swimmers alone
Are seen in the wave, and their strength is nigh gone.

Quoth three sailors on shore: “ They must give up hope.
Neither swimmer nor bout with such surges could cope.
Nor could one stand steady to cast a rope.

<f For he who would cast it must stand hip-high
Tn the trough of the sea, arid be thrown thereby
On his face, nevermore to behold the sky.”

But a woman stepped out from those gathered there,
And she said; “ My life for tlieir lives will I dare.
I pray for strength, God will hear my prayer.”