The Song of the Wreck

By Charles Dickens 1812–1870 Charles Dickens

The wind blew high, the waters raved,

A ship drove on the land,

A hundred human creatures saved

Kneel’d down upon the sand.

Three-score were drown’d, three-score were thrown

Upon the black rocks wild,

And thus among them, left alone,

They found one helpless child.

A seaman rough, to shipwreck bred,

Stood out from all the rest,

And gently laid the lonely head

Upon his honest breast.

And travelling o’er the desert wide

It was a solemn joy,

To see them, ever side by side,

The sailor and the boy.

In famine, sickness, hunger, thirst,

The two were still but one,

Until the strong man droop’d the first

And felt his labours done.

Then to a trusty friend he spake,

“Across the desert wide,

O take this poor boy for my sake!”

And kiss’d the child and died.

Toiling along in weary plight

Through heavy jungle, mire,

These two came later every night

To warm them at the fire.

Until the captain said one day,

“O seaman good and kind,

To save thyself now come away,

And leave the boy behind!”

The child was slumbering near the blaze:

“O captain, let him rest

Until it sinks, when God’s own ways

Shall teach us what is best!”

They watch’d the whiten’d ashy heap,

They touch’d the child in vain;

They did not leave him there asleep,

He never woke again.

Biography

Charles Dickens had one thing in common with his creation Thomas Gradgrind, the heartless utilitarian in Hard Times: a love of facts. Along with fourteen novels, many of them rich in topical allusion, Dickens produced a body of work as reporter, essayist, correspondent, and editor that constitutes a lifelong account of the facts of Victorian life as he knew them. However, this nonfiction is anything but a mere collection of . . .

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