Chanting, and with a regal sweep

Of their 'broidered garments up and down The strand, came the mighty waves of the deep, Dragging the wave-worn drift from its sleep Along the sea-sands bare and brown.

66

“O my soul, make the song of the sea!” I cried.
"How it comes, with its stately tread,
And its dreadful voice, and the splendid pride
Of its regal garments flowing wide

Over the land! to my soul I said.

My soul was still; the deep went down. "What hast thou, my soul," I cried,

"In thy song?" "The sea-sands bare and brown, With broken shells and sea-weed strown, And stranded drift," my soul replied.

W. D. HOWELLS

BUBBLES.

I.

STOOD on the brink in childhood,
And watched the bubbles go
From the rock-fretted, sunny ripple
To the smoother tide below;

And over the white creek-bottom,
Under them every one,

Went golden stars in the water,

All luminous with the sun.

PLEASURE-PAIN.

But the bubbles broke on the surface;
And under, the stars of gold
Broke; and the hurrying water
Flowed onward, swift and cold.

II.

I stood on the brink in manhood,
And it came to my weary brain,
And my heart, so dull and heavy
After the years of pain, –

That every hollowest bubble

Which over my life had passed

Still into its deeper current

Some heavenly gleam had cast;

That, however I mocked it gayly,
And guessed at its hollowness,

Still shone, with each bursting bubble,
One star in my soul the less.

PLEASURE-PAIN.

179

W. D. Howells.

I.

NE sails away to sea,

ΟΝ

One stands on the shore and cries;

The ship goes down the world, and the light
On the sullen water dies.

The whispering shell is mute,

And after is evil cheer:

She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain
Many and many a year.

But the stately, wide-winged ship

Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;

Far under, dead in his coral bed,

The lover lies asleep.

II.

Like a bird of evil presage,

To the lonely house on the shore
Came the wind with a tale of shipwreck,
And shrieked at the bolted door,

And flapped its wings in the gables,
And shouted the well-known names,
And buffeted the windows

Afeard in their shuddering frames.

The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking
In to the summer land.

The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking
In the sun so soft and bright,

And toss and play with the dead man

Drowned in the storm last night.

W. D. HOWELLS.

SONG OF THE DANISH SEA-KING. 181

THE SEA.

T surged and foamed on cold gray lands,

IT

No life was in its waves:

It rolled and raged on barren strands,
Or thundered into caves;

And yet it sang a glorious song,
An ancient pæan loud and long.

It broke upon the new-made beach,
That roaring, restless Sea,
The only burden of its speech
One word, Eternity;

And ever sang that glorious song,

An ancient pæan loud and long.

EDMUND SANDARS.

O

SONG OF THE DANISH SEA-KING.

UR bark is on the waters deep, our bright blade's in our hand,

Our birthright is the ocean vast, we scorn the girdled land;

And the hollow wind is our music brave, and none can bolder be

Than the hoarse-tongued tempest raving o'er a proud and swelling sea!

Our bark is dancing on the waves, its tall masts quivering bend

Before the gale, which hails us now with the hollo of a friend;

And its prow is sheering merrily the upcurled billow's foam,

While our hearts, with throbbing gladness, cheer old Ocean as our home.

Our eagle wings of might we stretch before the gallant wind,

And we leave the tame and sluggish earth a dim mean speck behind;

We shoot into the untracked deep, as earth-freed spirits soar,

Like stars of fire through boundless space, through

realms without a shore !

Lords of this wide-spread wilderness of waters, we bound free,

The haughty elements alone dispute our sovereignty; No landmark doth our freedom let, for no law of man can mete

The sky which arches o'er our head, the waves which kiss our feet!

The warrior of the land may back the wild horse, in his pride;

But a fiercer steed we dauntless breast, the untamed

ocean tide;