Star of the Sea Man - In Memoriam of Captain William Jackman

IN MEMORIAM
of Captain William Jackman

Star of the Sea Man

Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
Hushed by thy voice of Jubilee.
Thy Chief is dead, thy worthy Chief,
Man of the Great good heart and will,
Oh! Let thine all-absorbing grief
Be like to waters deep and still,
Profound as are the ocean's deeps
When, long the shore in piteous moans,
It lowly murmurs, sighs, and weeps
O'er graves of sad, unconfined bones.
Star of the Sea! look on as men
Who've lost a leader, brother, friend;
Yet look as those who once again
shall see him at your journey's end.
Leader-like he has led the way,
Has gone within the portal dark,
Behind which glows eternal day,
To which our sun is but a spark.

Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
Fitting Chief was he of thee,
Fitting Chief of the toilers brave
Whose home is on the stormy wave,
When yet in boyhood's early day
His face was dashed by ocean's spray,
Fit baptism of he sailor life
That gave him strength through all its strife.
The rugged shore of Labrador
Is witness of heroic deed,
Which makes us miss him more and more,
And causes our own hearts to bleed,
Because they could not succor give
To this great friend of human kind,
Who risked his life that men might live,
Dared breaking seas and raging wind.

Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
Thy Chief was as the stately tree,
The woodland's king, tall, stout, and brown,
With oaken heart, and leafy crown.
Proudly it raised its royal crest,
Its branches bore the songster's nest,
It was the pride of all the wood
Wherein for many a year it stood.
It grew apace, and when the gale
Blew fiercely through the woodland vale,
The large, broad branches of the oak
Oft shielded from the felling stroke,
An ancient tree that near it grew,
And gave it of its vigorous dew.
The ancient tree was dry and old
Its vital sap was almost cold
Its branches grisly, naked, stood
Wanting raiment, dying for food.
Together grew the incongruous pair
One palsied old, one youthful fair,
Till once, upon a dreadful night,
When raged the tempest in its might,
O'er one of them the lightenings past,
And fell it withered in the blast.
Was it the shriveled trunk that fell?
‘Twas the lusty oak, too sad to tell!
Th' unequal fate of either tree
Methinks suggests an allegory.
Is it not found that grisly death
Full often withers with his breath
The robust life, the healthful bloom,
And lays them cold within the tomb,
While tottering age upon its brink
Is spared to make the Christian think,
And ponder on the unerring Power
That fells the oak and props the flower,
That still keeps in the flickering spark
Of lamps of life fast growing dark,
That still lets live three score and ten
And calls to Him the strongest men.
One instance is our worthy Chief,
For whom all hearts are steeped in grief.

Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
In some respects the simile,
Drawn ‘twixt the trees and human lot,
In all things parallel is not.
‘Tis true our Captain's charity
Was like the sheltering oaken tree:
Many an old man hath it made
Refreshed withing its generous shade.
To many a hungry family
Hath it been as the bread-fruit tree.
Like the stately oak has he fallen down
And kissed the earth with his noble crown.
The oak shall never more arise,
Nor bear its crest to the azure skies;
Not so the body of our friend
That sleep will till the world's great end,
When it again shall feel the breath
Of the spirit, snatched from it by death.
Snatched, but not kept, o'en now, we trust,
While dwells the corpse in kindred dust,
The spirit near th' Almighty's throne
Has tasted of the bliss unknown.
This is our faith, for this we pray,
That he may know eternal day.

Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
‘Tis consolation great that he,
Since God's will ‘twas that he should die,
Was let among his own to lie,
And that the close of his young life
Was soothed by tender care of wife,
Hallowed by religious rite
That makes the burthen half as light.
He witnessed in his short career
Such scenes as cause strong men to fear.
He saw the angry ocean oft
Pitching its waves so high aloft,
As if ‘twould quench the heavens own light
That guides the sailor in the night.
He saw; but knew there was one star
Which all creation cannot mar.
That star, my friends, was ever she,
Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!
He lived through the storms, the ocean's foam,
And came at length to die at home.
God would not that the noble brave
Should in the ocean find a grave.
The arms that bore the shipwrecked crew
To safety while the tempest blew,
While the ocean like a beast of prey
Would snatch them from his breast away
Should not be buffered in roar
Of breakers on the dismal shore.
He rests in peaceful Belvedere,
Where oft will fall the mourning tear,
Around him brothers, not a few
Sleep ‘neath the cypress and the yew,
Let's deck his grave with choicest flowers,
And water them with sorrow's showers.

Star of the Sea Man