But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love! let us be true

To one another for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy nor love nor light,
Nor certitude nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I

Matthew Arnold.

CHILD AND SHELL.

HAVE seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely, and his countenance soon Brightened with joy for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.

:

Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart

Authentic tidings of invisible things,

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation. Here you stand,
Adore, and worship, when you know it not;
Pious beyond the intention of your thought,
Devout above the meaning of your will.

115

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

HIS is the ship of pearl which, poets feign,

TH

Sails the unshadowed main,—

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings,
In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming

hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl,—

Wrecked is the ship of pearl !

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,-

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed.

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old

no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea!

Cast from her lap forlorn,

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn.

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

O. W. Holmes.

A SEA SHELL.

A SEA SHELL.

EE what a lovely shell,

SEE

Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man

Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?
Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap

The three decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

117

Tennyson.

Q

A FISHING-TOWN.

UAINT clusters of gray houses crowding down
Unto a river's edge; the river wide,
And flecked with fishing-boats beyond the town,
Incoming with the slow incoming tide.
Moored to the old pier-end, a smack or two
Slow dandled by the shoreward-setting swell,
And with their nets with every dip wet through,
Show their black, pitchy ribs. Some far ship's bell
Comes in the capful of light wind that hails
From seaward; while still louder and more loud,
Beneath the lowering hood of ashen cloud,

Rings the hoarse fisher's shout. There nearing sails
Loom large and shadowy; and the sunset gun
Tells that another day is o'er and done.

Anon.

SUMMER-CHEMISTRY.

WHAT does it take

A day to make,

A day at the Bear Camp Ossipee?

White clouds a-sail in the shining blue,
With shadows dropt to dredge the lands;
A mountain-wind, and a marching storm,
And a sound in the trees like waves on sands;

A mist to soften the shaggy side

Of the great green hill, till it lies as dim

As the hills in a childhood memory;