I gaze far over the quiet sea,

Rosy with sunset, like mellow wine,
Where ships, like lilies, lie tranquilly,
Many and fair, — but I see not mine.

I question the sailors every night
Who over the bulwarks idly lean,
Noting the sails as they come in sight,

O, mine was a vessel of strength and truth,
Her sails were white as a young lamb's fleece,
She sailed long since from the port of Youth,
Her master was Love, and her name was Peace.
And like all beloved and beauteous things,
She faded in distance and doubt away,
With only a tremble of snowy wings
She floated, swan-like, adown the bay,

-

Carrying with her a precious freight,
All I had gathered by years of pain;
A tempting prize to the pirate, Fate,
And still I watch for her back again ;-
Watch from the earliest morning light
Till the pale stars grieve o'er the dying day,
To catch the gleam of her canvas white
Among the islands which gem the bay.
But she comes not yet, she will never come
To gladden my eyes and my spirit more ;
And my heart grows hopeless and faint and dumb,
As I wait and wait on the lonesome shore,

Knowing that tempest and time and storm

Have wrecked and shattered my beauteous bark; Rank sea-weeds cover her wasting form,

And her sails are tattered and stained and dark.

But the tide comes up, and the tide goes down,

And the daylight follows the night's eclipse,-
And still with the sailors, tanned and brown,
I wait on the wharves and watch the ships.

And still with a patience that is not hope,
For vain and empty it long hath been,
I sit on the rough shore's rocky slope,
And watch to see if my ship comes in.

ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN
(FLORENCE PERCY).

AFAR IN THE DESERT.

AFAR in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the present, I cling to the past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years:
And shadows of things that have long since fled
Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead,

"Have you seen my beautiful ship come in?" Bright visions of glory that vanished too soon;

Day-dreams, that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments by fate or falsehood reft;
Companions of carly days lost or left ;

And my native land, whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;

All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time
When the feelings were young, and the world

The home of my childhood; the haunts of my Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
prime;
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched karroo.

was new,

Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All, all now forsaken, forgotten, foregone!
And I, a lone exile remembered of none,

My high aims abandoned, my good acts un-
done,

Aweary of all that is under the sun,

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side,

With that sadness of heart which no stranger Away, away, in the wilderness vast

may scan,

I fly to the desert afar from man.

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side!
When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and
strife,

Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan,
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and
fear;

Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;

The proud man's frown, and the base man's Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root, fear,

The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear,
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and
folly,

Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy;
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are
high,

And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh,-
O, then there is feeedom, and joy, and pride,
Afar in the desert alone to ride!

There is rapture to vault on the champing steed,
And to bound away with the eagle's speed,
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand,
The only law of the Desert Land!

Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot ;
And the bitter-melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides ;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank "horizon, round and round,
Spread, - void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone,
"A still small voice" comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,
Saying, Man is distant, but God is near !

THOMAS PRINGLE.

MAJESTY IN MISERY;

OR, AN IMPLORATION TO THE KING OF KINGS.

GREAT Monarch of the World, from whose Power
Springs

The Potency and Power of Kings,
Record the Royal Woe my Suffering sings ;

And teach my tongue, that ever did confine
Its faculties in Truth's Seraphic Line,
To track the Treasons of thy foes and mine.

Nature and law, by thy Divine Decree
(The only Root of Righteous Royaltie)
With this dim Diadem invested me: