66 Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land,

Like a lover kissing his lady's hand,
The wild sea kissing her,—

A sight to remember, sir!"

"But, my good mother, do you know All this was twenty years ago?

6

I stood on the Gray Swan's' deck,
And to that lad I saw you throw,
Taking it off as it might be,—so !—
The kerchief from your neck.”
“Ay, and he'll bring it back!"

"And did the little lawless lad,

That has made you sick and made you sad,

6

Sail with the Gray Swan's' crew?"

"Lawless! The man is going mad!
The best boy ever mother had !—
Be sure he sailed with the crew!
What would you have him do?"

"And has he never written line,
Nor sent you word, nor made you sign,

To say he was alive?"

"Hold! If 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine;

Besides, he may lie in the brine;

And could he write from the grave?

Tut, man! what would you have?"

Romance

and Reality

Romance "Gone twenty years, a long, long cruise! and 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse! Reality

But if the lad still live,

And come back home, think you you can

Forgive him?"

66

Miserable man!

You're mad as the sea, you rave!
What have I to forgive?"

The sailor twitched his shirt so blue,
And from within his bosom drew
The kerchief. She was wild.
"O God, my Father! is it true?
My little lad, my Elihu!

My blessed boy, my child!

My dead, my living child!"

ALICE CARY.

The Wreck of the Hesperus

It was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The sinoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr
Had sailed to the Spanish main,
"I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;

Romance and

Reality

Romance He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

and Reality

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring;

O say, what may it be?"

""T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

66

"O father I see a gleaming light;

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept

Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board:
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,-
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach
A fisherman stood aghast

To see the form of a maiden fair

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Romance and

Reality