Twilight.

THE twilight is sad and cloudy; The wind blows wild and free; And like the wings of sea-birds

Flash the white caps of the sea.

But in the fisherman's cottage
There shines a ruddier light,
And a little face at the window
Peers out into the night;

Close, close it is pressed to the window,

As if those childish eyes
Were looking into the darkness,

To see some form arise.

And a woman's waving shadow
Is passing to and fro,
Now rising to the ceiling,

Now bowing and bending low.

What tale do the roaring ocean

And the night-wind, bleak and wild, As they beat at the crazy casement, Tell to that little child?

And why do the roaring ocean,

And the night-wind, wild and bleak, As they beat at the heart of the mother, Drive the color from her cheek?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

Storm Song.

THE clouds are scudding across the moon;
A misty light is on the sea;
The wind in the shrouds has a wintry tune,
And the foam is flying free.

Brothers, a night of terror and gloom

Speaks in the cloud and gathering roar; Thank God, He has given us broad sea-room, A thousand miles from shore.

Down with the hatches on those who sleep!
The wild and whistling deck have we;
Good watch, my brothers, to-night we'll keep,
While the tempest is on the sea!

THE night is made for cooling shade, For silence, and for sleep;

And when I was a child, I laid

My hands upon my breast, and prayed,
And sank to slumbers deep:

Childlike as then I lie to-night,
And watch my lonely cabin-light.

Each movement of the swaying lamp
Shows how the vessel reels;
As o'er her deck the billows tramp,
And all her timbers strain and cramp
With every shock she feels,

It starts and shudders, while it burns,
And in its hinged socket turns.

Now swinging slow and slanting low,
It almost level lies;

And yet I know, while to and fro
I watch the seeming pendule go
With restless fall and rise,
The steady shaft is still upright,
Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!
O promise of my soul!
Though weak, and tossed, and ill at ease,
Amid the roar of smiting seas,

The ship's convulsive roll,

I own with love and tender awe

Yon perfect type of faith and law.

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges Of sunken ledges

In some far-off, bright Azore;

From Bahama and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf that buries

The Orkneyan skerries, Answering the hoarse Hebrides; And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches

Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long,
From each cave and rocky fastness

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of truth;

From the flashing surf whose vision Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong will, and the endeavor
That for ever

Wrestles with the tides of fate;
From the wreck of hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

Gulf-Weed.

A WEARY weed, tossed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine,
Soaring high and sinking low,

Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spoom of the surging sea;
Flung on the foam, afar and anear,
Mark my manifold mystery,—

Growth and grace in their place appear.

I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;

My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er,

White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar,
Gracefully grow I, night and day.

Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
Something whispers soft to me,
Restless and roaming for evermore,

Like this weary weed of the sea;

Bear they yet on each beating breast

The eternal type of the wondrous whole —

Growth unfolding amidst unrest,

Grace informing with silent soul.

CORNELIUS GEORGE FENNER.

On a Picture of Peel Castle in a Storm.

I WAS thy neighbor once, thou rugged pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of
thee:

I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air,

So like, so very like was day to day, Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,

No mood which season takes away or brings:

I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then if mine had been the painter's hand To express what then I saw, and add the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the poet's dream,

I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile, Amid a world how different from this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile, On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

A picture had it been of lasting ease,

Elysian quiet without toil or strife; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Such picture would I at that time have made; And seen the soul of truth in every part,

A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been;-'tis so no more; I have submitted to a new control;

A power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold

A smiling sea, and be what I have been; The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, friend! who would have been the friend,

If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O'tis a passionate work!—yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here:
That hulk which labors in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling

Of thousands thou both sepulchre and pall, Old Ocean, art! A requiem o'er the dead From out thy gloomy cells

A tale of mourning tells — Tells of man's woe and fall,

His sinless glory fled.

Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring Thy spirit never more.

Come, quit with me the shore

For gladness, and the light

Where birds of summer sing.

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

The Sand-Piper.

ACROSS the narrow beach we flit,

One little sand-piper and I;

And fast I gather, bit by bit,

The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry.

The wild waves reach their hands for it,

The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,

As up and down the beach we flit-
One little sand-piper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds

Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts, in misty shrouds Stand out the white light-houses nigh. Almost as far as eye can reach,

I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach One little sand-piper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,

Or flash of fluttering drapery:
He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye;
Staunch friends are we, well-tried and strong,
This little sand-piper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,

When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My drift-wood fire will burn so bright!

To what warm shelter canst thou fly?

I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou little sand-piper and I?

CELIA THAXTER,

The Coral Grove.

DEEP in the wave is a coral grove,

71

Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue

That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine
Far down in the green and glassy brine.
The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift,
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs, where the tides and billows

flow;

The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there,

And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air.
There, with its waving blade of green,
The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen
To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter.
There, with a light and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep

sea;

And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea.
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,

And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the wave his own.
And when the ship from his fury flies,

Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky
skies,

And demons are waiting the wreck on shore;
Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and gold-fish rove
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral
grove.

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.