I

THE RIVER OF TIME.

BY THE SEA.

T is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity.

The gentleness of heaven is on the sea ;
Listen the mighty being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

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Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine :

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

Wordsworth.

THE RIVER OF TIME.

HIS tract which the River of Time

Now flows through with us, is the Plain.

Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.

Border'd by cities and hoarse

With a thousand cries is its stream.

And we on its breast, our minds

Are confus'd as the cries which we hear,

Changing and short as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled

Forever the course of the River of Time.

That cities will crowd to its edge

In a blacker incessanter line;

That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,

Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.

That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,

Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not.
And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply the River of Time,

As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights

On a wider statelier stream-
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,

Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the gray expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike

Peace to the soul of the man on its breast:
As the pale waste widens around him—
As the banks fade dimmer away-

As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea.

Matthew Arnold.

A GREYPORT LEGEND.

151

TH

A GREYPORT LEGEND.

1797.

HEY ran through the streets of the seaport town, They peered from the decks of the ships that lay;

The cold sea-fog that came whitening down

Was never so cold or white as they. "Ho! Starbuck, Pinckney, and Tenterden! Run for your shallops, gather your men,

Scatter your boats on the lower bay."

Good cause for fear! In the thick mid-day,
The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,
Filled with the children in happy play,
Parted its moorings and drifted clear,—
Drifted clear beyond reach or call,-
Thirteen children they were in all,-
All adrift in the lower bay!

Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!"
Said his wife, "My darling will hear my call,
Whether in sea or heaven she bide."

And she lifted a quavering voice and high,
Wild and strange as the sea-bird's cry,

Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

The fog drove down on each laboring crew,
Veiled each from each, and the sky and shore.
There was not a sound but the breath they drew,
And the lap of water and creak of oar;

And they felt the breath of the downs fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone,

But not from the lips that had gone before. They came no more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor-reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail,

For the signal they know will bring relief, For the voices of children still at play

In a phantom hulk that drifts away

Through channels whose waters never fail.

It is but a foolish shipman's tale,
A theme for a poet's idle page;

But still when the mists of doubt prevail,
And we lie becalmed by the shores of age,
We hear from the misty troubled shore
The voice of the children gone before,
Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

Bret Harte.

THE EARL O' QUARTERDECK.

THE

A NEW OLD BALLAD.

HE wind it blew and the ship it flew ;
Hey for hame!

And it was 66

And ho for hame!" But the skipper cried,

"Haud her oot o'er the saut sea facm."

Then up and spoke the king himsel':

"Haud on for Dumferline!"

Quoth the skipper, "Ye're king upo' the land— I'm king upo' the brine."

THE EARL O' QUARTERDECK.
And he took the helm intil his hand,
And he steered the ship sae free;
Wi' the wind astarn, he crowded sail,
And stood right out to sea.

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Quo' the king, "There's treason in this, I vow; This is something underhand!

'Bout ship!" Quo' the skipper, "Yer grace forgets Ye are king but o' the land!

And still he held to the open sea;

And the east wind sank behind ; And the west had a bitter word to say, Wi' a white-sea roarin' wind.

And he turned her head into the north.
Said the king: "Gar fling him o'er."
Quo' the fearless skipper : "It's a' ye're worth;
Ye'll ne'er see Scotland more.'

The king crept down the cabin stair,
To drink the gude French wine,
And up she came, his daughter fair,
And luikit ower the brine.

She turned her face to the drivin' hail,
To the hail but and the weet;

Her snood it brak', and, as lang's hersel',
Her hair drave out in the sleet.

She turned her face frae the drivin' win'-.
"What's that ahead?" quo' she.

The skipper he threw himsel' frac the win',
And he drove the helm a-lee.