With clashing wheel, and lifting keel,
And smoking torch on high,
When winds are loud, and billows reel,
She thunders foaming by!

When seas are silent and serene,
With even beam she glides,

The sunshine glimmering through the green
That skirts her gleaming sides.

Now, like a wild nymph, far apart
She veils her shadowy form,
The beating of her restless heart
Still sounding through the storm;
Now answers, like a courtly dame,
The reddening surges o'er,
With flying scarf of spangled flame,
The Pharos of the shore.

To-night yon pilot shall not sleep,
Who trims his narrowed sail;
To-night yon frigate scarce shall keep
Her broad breast to the gale;
And many a foresail, scooped and strained,
Shall break from yard and stay,

Before this smoky wreath has stained
The rising mist of day.

Hark! hark! I hear yon whistling shroud, I see yon quivering mast;

The black throat of the hunted cloud

Is panting forth the blast!

An hour, and, whirled like winnowing chaff,
The giant surge shall fling
His tresses o'er yon pennon-staff,
White as the sea-bird's wing!

Yet rest, ye wanderers of the deep;
Nor wind nor wave shall tire
Those fleshless arms, whose pulses leap
With floods of living fire;

Sleep on, and when the morning light
Streams o'er the shining bay,

O, think of those for whom the night
Shall never wake in day!

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

0

THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

LONELY bay of Trinity,

O dreary shores, give ear!

Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear!

From world to world his couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of his stormy sky

Rides down the sunken wire.

What saith the herald of the Lord?

"The world's long strife is done;

Close wedded by that mystic cord,

Its continents are one.

"And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;

The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.

"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain

And Asian mountains borne, The vigor of the Northern brain

Shall nerve the world outworn.

"From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead."

Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach;

Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,

And melt the chains of each!

Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tame and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,

Beneath the deep so far,

The bridal robe of earth's accord,

The funeral shroud of war!

For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall

Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!

The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee

The Christ is whispering, Peace!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

ROLL

THE OCEAN.

L on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him; thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee: Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play; Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed; in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime, —
The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.