SUN AND SHADOW.

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:

Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the

As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

spray

Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, -
Of breakers that whiten and roar;

How little he cares, if in shadow or sun

They see him who gaze from the shore!

He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee,

As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves

Where life and its ventures are laid,

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in sunshine or shade;

Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
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 wreathéd 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!

THE TWO ARMIES.

As Life's unending column pours, Two marshalled hosts are seen, Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between.

One marches to the drum-beat's roll,

The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,

And bears upon a crimson scroll,

"Our glory is to slay."

One moves in silence by the stream, With sad, yet watchful eyes, Calm as the patient planet's gleam

That walks the clouded skies.