320 THE WRECk of the hesperus.

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

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

And she thought of Christ who stilled the waves 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 sides
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.

LIBRARY

OF TH

THE SUMMER SHOWER. UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

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;

Heaven save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

THE SUMMER SHOWER.

T. B. READ.

BEFORE the stout harvesters falleth the grain,
As when the strong storm-wind is reaping the plain,
And loiters the boy in the briery lane;

But yonder aslant comes the silvery rain,

Like a long line of spears brightly burnished and tall.

Adown the white highway like cavalry fleet,
It dashes the dust with its numberless feet.
Like a murmurless school, in their leafy retreat,
The wild birds sit listening the drops round them

beat;

And the boy crouches close to the blackberry wall.

322 THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS.

The swallows alone take the storm on their wing, And, taunting the tree-sheltered laborers, sing,

Like pebbles the rain breaks the face of the spring, While a bubble darts up from each widening ring; And the boy in dismay hears the loud shower fall.

But soon are the harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves;

· The wren peereth forth from the moss-covered

eaves;

And the rain-spattered urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful bow bendeth over them all.

THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS.

R. SOUTHEY.

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried,

66

The few locks which are left you are gray;

You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," Father William replied, “I remembered that youth would fly fast,

And abused not my health and my vigor at first,
That I never might need them at last."

"You are old, Father William,” the young man cried, "And pleasures with youth pass away;

And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," Father William replied,

"I remembered that youth could not last;

I thought of the future whatever I did,

66

That I never might grieve for the past."

• You are old, Father William," the young man cried,

66

And life must be hastening away;

You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death, Now tell me the reason, I pray.”

I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied,

66

Let the cause thy attention engage;

In the days of my youth I remembered my God
And he hath not forgotten my age."

AUTUMN.

P. B. SHELLEY.

THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are

dying;

And the year

On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves

dead,

Is lying.

Come, Months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array,

Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

324

TO DAFFODILS.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone

To his dwelling.

Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play;
Ye follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

TO DAFFODILS.

R. HERRICK.

FAIR daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early rising sun

Has not attained his noon :

Stay, stay,

Until the hastening day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.