The Death-Boat of Heligoland

Can restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the deadThere are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth:By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner’s glance.Such I wot, was the band of cadaverous smileSeen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo’s isle.The foam of the Baltic had sparkled like fire,And the red moon looked down with an aspect of ire;But her beams on a sudden grew sick-like and grey,And the mews that had slept clanged and shrieked far awayAnd the buoys and the beacons extinguished their light,As the boat of the stony-eyed dead came in sight,High bounding from billow to billow; each formHad its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm;With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,Fast they ploughed, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,Such breakers as boat of the living ne’er crossed;Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed,And with livid lips shouted reply o’er the floodTo the challenging watchman that curdled his blood—“We are dead—we are bound from our graces in the west,First to Hecla, and then to——” Unmeet was the restFor man’s ear. The old abbey bell thundered its clang,And their eyes gleamed with phosphorous light as it rangEre they vanished, they stopped, and gazed silently grim,Till the eye could define them, garb, feature and limbNow who were those roamers?—of gallows or wheelBore they marks, or the mangling anatomist’s steel?No, by magistrates’ chains ’mid their grave-clothes you saw,They were felons too proud to have perished by law;But a ribbon that hung where a rope should have been,’Twas the badge of their faction, its hue was not green,Showed them men who had trampled and tortured and drivenTo rebellion the fairest Isle breathed on by Heaven,—Men whose heirs would yet finish the tyrannous task,If the Truth and the Time had not dragged off their mask.They parted—but not till the sight might discernA scutcheon distinct at their pinnace’s stern,Where letters emblazoned in blood-coloured flame,Named their faction—I blot not my page with its name.