Romance and Reality The "Gray Swan" "Oh, tell me, sailor, tell me true, A-sailing with your ship?" The sailor's eyes were dim with dew. "What little lad? as if there could be What little lad, do you say? Why Elihu, that took to the sea The moment I put him off my knee! The Gray Swan' sailed away." "The other day?" The sailor's eyes The jacket he had on." "And so your lad is gone?" "Gone with the Swan '? "_" And did she stand 1 "Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land, Like a lover kissing his lady's hand,· The wild sea kissing her, A sight to remember, sir!" 6 know I stood on the Gray Swan's' deck, "And did the little lawless lad, That has made you sick and made you sad, 6 Sail with the Gray Swan's' crew?" "Lawless! The man is going mad! Be sure he sailed with the crew! "And has he never written line, To say he was alive?" "Hold! If 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine; Besides, he may lie in the brine; And could he write from the grave? Tut, man! what would you have?” Romance and Reality Romance "Gone twenty years, a long, long cruise! And come back home, think you you can The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, The kerchief. She was wild. My blessed boy, my child! My dead, my living child!" ALICE CARY. The Wreck of the Hesperus It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The sinoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailòr Had sailed to the Spanish main, "I pray thee put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane. "Last night the moon had a golden ring, The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, Colder and colder blew the wind, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed, "Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr, For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow.” He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Romance and Reality Romance He cut a rope from a broken spar, and Reality And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring; ""T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" "O father! I hear the sound of guns; "Some ship in distress, that cannot live “O father I see a gleaming light; O say, what may it be?" Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. |