dead!

thee !

And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothok.

Restore the dead, thou sea!

FELICIA HEMANS.

The sun in heaven was shining gay,
All things were joyful on that day; ·
The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled around,
And there was joyance in their sound.

"OLD IRONSIDES."

They hear no sound; the swell is strong;
Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along;
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock, -
O Christ! it is the Inchcape rock!

Sir Ralph, the rover, tore his hair;
He cursed himself in his despair.
The waves rush in on every side; .
The ship is sinking beneath the tide.

But ever in his dying fear

One dreadful sound he seemed to hear, -
A sound as if with the Inchcape bell
The Devil below was ringing his knell.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are watching and wringing their hands,

For those who will never come back to the

town;

For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it 's over, the sooner to sleep, And good-by to the bar and its moaning.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

THE SANDS O' DEE.

"O MARY, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee!"

The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.

The creeping tide came up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see;

The blinding mist came down and hid the land : And never home came she.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

THE sea crashed over the grim gray rocks,
It thundered beneath the height,

It swept by reef and sandy dune,
It glittered beneath the harvest moon,
That bathed it in yellow light.

Shell, and sea-weed, and sparkling stone,
It flung on the golden sand.
Strange relics torn from its deepest caves,
Sad trophies of wild victorious waves,
It scattered upon the strand.

Spars that had looked so strong and true,
At many a gallant launch,
Shattered and broken, flung to the shore,
While the tide in its wild triumphant roar
Rang a dirge for the vessel stanch.

Petty trifles that lovers had brought

From many a foreign clime,

Snatched by the storm from the clinging clasp Of hands that the lonely will never grasp, While the world yet measures time.

Back, back to its depths went the ebbing tide,
Leaving its stores to rest,
Unsought and unseen in the silent bay,
To be gathered again, ere close of day,
To the ocean's mighty breast.

Kinder than man art thou, O sea;

Frankly we give our best,

Truth, and hope, and love, and faith,
Devotion that challenges time and death
Its sterling worth to test.

We fling them down at our darling's feet,
Indifference leaves them there.
The careless footstep turns aside,
Weariness, changefulness, scorn, or pride,
Bring little of thought or care.

No tide of human feeling turns ;

Once ebbed, love never flows;
The pitiful wreckage of time and strife,
The flotsam and jetsam of human life,
No saving reflux knows.

ANONYMOUS

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main ;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, erelong,
From each cave and rocky fastness
In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor
That forever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,

They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hearts there are on the sounding shore,

Something whispers soft to me, Restless and roaming forevermore, Like this weary weed of the sea; Bear they yet on each beating breast

The eternal type of the wondrous whole, Growth unfolding amidst unrest,

Grace informing with silent soul.

CORNELIUS GEORGE FENNER.

SEA LIFE.

FROM "THE PELICAN ISLAND."

LIGHT as a flake of foam upon the wind
Keel-upward from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself, alive.
Entranced in contemplation, vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.

It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing;

While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,

Through which mine eyes still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long, light wings, that flung a diamond-

shower

These were but preludes to the revelry
That reigned at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,
As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners; aloof,

On wing-like fins, in bow-and-arrow figures,
The flying-fishes darted to and fro;

While spouting whales projected watery col

umns,

That turned to arches at their height, and seemed
The skeletons of crystal palaces

Built on the blue expanse, then perishing,
Frail as the element which they were made of;
Dolphins, in gambols, lent the lucid brine
Hues richer than the canopy of eve,
That overhung the scene with gorgeous clouds,
Decaying into gloom more beautiful
Than the sun's golden liveries which they lost :
Till light that hides, and darkness that reveals
The stars, exchanging guard, like sentinels
Of day and night, - transformed the face of
nature:

Above was wakefulness, silence around,
Beneath, repose, repose that reached even me.
Power, will, sensation, memory, failed in turn;
My very essence seemed to pass away,
Like a thin cloud that melts across the moon,
Lost in the blue immensity of heaven.