A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ;

Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

249

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,

And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down,

They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,

And the night rack came rolling up ragged and brown!

This is life to come,

weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,

And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands

For those who will never come back to the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,

glorious

For us, who strive to follow.

May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible, Whose music is the gladness of the world.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

[1819-1874.]

THE THREE FISHERS.

THREE fishers went sailing out into the

west,

Out into the west as the sun went down ;

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands of Dee";

The western wind was wild and dank wi'

foam,

And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land,

And never home came she.

The cruel hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea:

Of the shearers that I see, Ne'er a body kens me,

And this fisher-wife I pass,

Can she be the braw lass

That I kissed at the back of Strathairly?

longs,

A worthy hymn in woman's praise; The best half of creation's best,

Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome.

Yet now it is my chosen task

To sing her worth as maid and wife; And were such post to seek, I'd ask To live her laureate all my life. On wings of love uplifted free,

And by her gentleness made great, I'd teach how noble man should be, To match with such a lovely mate; Until (for who may hope too much

From her who wields the powers of love), Our lifted lives at last should touch That lofty goal to which they move: Until we find, as darkness rolls

Far off, and fleshly mists dissolve, That nuptial contrasts are the poles On which the heavenly spheres revolve.

THE CHASE.

SHE wearies with an ill unknown;
In sleep she sobs and seems to float,
A water-lily, all alone

Within a lonely castle-moat;
And as the full moon, spectral, lies

Within the crescent's gleaming arms, The present shows her heedless eyes

A future dim with vague alarms: She sees, and yet she scarcely sees; For, life-in-life not yet begun, Too many are life's mysteries

For thought to fix t'ward any one.

She's told that maidens are by youths
Extremely honored and desired;
And sighs, "If those sweet tales be truths,
What bliss to be so much admired!"
The suitors come; she sees them grieve;
Her coldness fills them with despair:
She'd pity if she could believe;

She's sorry that she cannot care.

Who's this that meets her on her way?
Comes he as enemy, or friend;
Or both? Her bosom seems to say

He cannot pass, and there an end.
Whom does he love? Does he confer

His heart on worth that answers his?