Glee ! the great storm is over !
Four have recovered the land ;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.
Ring, for the scant salvation !
Toll, for the bonnie souls, —
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals !
How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty ?
Did they come back no more ?"
Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye ;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.
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