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?

THE LIGHTHOUSE.

THE rocky ledge runs far into the sea, And on its outer point, some miles away,

The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,

A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,

Upheaving, break unheard along its base,

A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides

In the white lip and tremor of the face.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,

Through the deep purple of the twilight air,

Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light

With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.

THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.

DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.

WE sat within the farm-house old,

Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,

The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,

Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight,

Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said,

(f what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,

When first they feel, with secret pain, T'heir lives thenceforth have separate ends,

And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express,

And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but
mark;

The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,

As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,

We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part

Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!

They were indeed too much akin, The drift-wood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

RESIGNATION.

THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and

vapors ;

Amid these earthly damps

ing,

And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children

crying,

Will not be comforted!

May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! What seems so is

transition;

This life of mortal breath

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown !
How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's
sight

His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,

Crushed it beneath their tread ;
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,
Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and
faith

Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,
And singing slow their old Armenian
psalms

In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain; The half-hour's sand is run!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BLACK shadows fall
From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere

A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

passed!

Now in this crystal tower

But their forms 1 cannot see.

Before my dreamy eye

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

sand,

Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,

This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun, Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow

run,

Till thought pursues in vain.

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and

wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight
Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.