POMPEII.

Oh, the land's fine, fine!

I could buy it a' for mine,

My gowd's yellow as the stooks o' Strathairly;
But I fain yon lad wad be,

That sail'd ower the salt sea,

As the dawn rose gray on Strathairly.

POMPEII.

93

D. M. MULOCK.

HE silence there was what most haunted me.

THE

Long, speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite

Feet which shall never come; to left and right
Gay colonnades and courts, — beyond the glee,
Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea;
On roofless homes and waiting streets, the light
Lies with a pathos sorrowfuller than night.
Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death
Wedded, and with her wand restores the Life.
The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath
The open shops, and all the tropic strife.

Of voices, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, mix. The wreath
Indolent hangs on far Vesuvius' crest;

And over all the glowing town and guiltless sea, sweet

rest.

THOMAS G. APPLETON.

THE

AT DIEPPE.

HE shivering column of the moonlight lies
Upon the crumbling sea;

Down the lone shore the flying curlew cries
Half humanly.

With hoarse, dull wash the backward dragging surge
Its raucid pebbles rakes,

Or swelling dark runs down with toppling verge,
And flashing breaks.

The lighthouse flares and darkens from the cliff,
And stares with lurid eye

Fiercely along the sea and shore, as if

Some foe to spy.

What knowing thought, O ever-moaning sea,

Haunts thy perturbed breast,

What dark crime weighs upon thy memory

And spoils thy rest?

Thy soft swell lifts and swings the new-launched yacht
With polished spars and deck,

But crawls and grovels where the bare ribs rot
Of the old wreck.

O treacherous courtier! thy deceitful lie

To youth is gayly told,

But in remorse I see thee cringingly

Crouch to the old.

W. W. STORY.

THE PELICAN ISLAND.

95

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 my 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
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure on the surge,
A shoal of dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,

Glowed with such orient tints they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy I hung o'er these,

With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colors came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes, -
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan

Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
JAMES MONTGOMERY.

SAUNT

SANTA CRUZ.

1869.

AUNTERING hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,

Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,
Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou hast, old friend, that's new,
Storms and wrecks are old things to thee;
Sick am I of these changes too;

Little to care for, little to rue,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings far and near

Bring thee at last to shore and me; All of my journeyings end them here,

A SEA-VIEW.

This our tether must be our cheer,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,

Something in common, old friend, have we:
Thou on the shingle seekest thy nest,

I to the waters look for rest,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

97

BRET HARTE.

I

A SEA-VIEW.

CLIMBED the sea-worn cliffs that edged the shore,

And looking downward watched the breakers curl
Around the rocks, and marked their mighty swirl
Quiver through swaying seaweed dark and hoar.
Eastward the white caps rose with far-off roar,
Against a sky like red and purple pearl,
Then hollowed greenly in, and rushed to hurl
Their weight of water at the cliffs before.
Only a sea-gull flying silently,

And one soft, rosy sail, were now in sight, -
A sail the sunset touched right tenderly,
And flushed with dreamy glory faintly bright.
Then fain would I have crossed the tossing sea,
Fain dared the storm to float within that light.

ALICE OSBorne.