And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board:
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank,-
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach
A fisherman stood aghast

To see the form of a maiden fair

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!

Romance and

Reality

Romance Christ save us all from a death like this
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

and

Reality

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

A Greyport Legend

They ran through the streets of the seaport town;
They peered from the decks of the ships that

lay:

The cold sea-fog that comes whitening down
Was never as cold or white as they.

66

Ho, Starbuck, and Pinckney, and Tenterden,

Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay!"

Good cause for fear! In the thick midday
The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,
Filled with the children in happy play,
Parted its moorings and drifted clear;
Drifted clear beyond reach or call,—
Thirteen children they were in all,-

All adrift in the lower bay!

Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!"
Said his wife," My darling will hear my call.

Whether in sea or heaven she bide!"

And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

The fog drove down on each laboring crew,

Veiled each from each and the sky and shore;
There was not a sound but the breath they drew,
And the lap of water and creak of oar.

And they felt the breath of the downs
fresh blown

O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before.

They came no more. But they tell the tale

That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel-fishers shorten sail;

For the signal they know will bring relief,
For the voices of children, still at play
In a phantom-hulk that drifts alway
Through channels whose waters never fail.

It is but a foolish shipman's tale,
A theme for a poet's idle page;

But still, when the mists of doubt prevail,
And we lie becalmed by the shores of age,

We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage!

BRET HARTE.

Romance and Reality

Romance

and

Reality

The Glove and the Lions

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,

And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;

The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,

And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed :

And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,

Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;

They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws;

With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,

Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;

The bloody foam above the bars came whisking
through the air;
Said Francis then, " Faith, gentlemen, we're bet-
ter here than there."

66

De Lorge's love o’erheard the king,—a beauteous Romance

lively dame

With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which

always seem'd the same:

She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be;

He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;

King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;

I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropp'd her glove, to prove his love, then look'd at him and smiled;

He bowed, and in a moment leapt among the lions wild:

His leap was quick, return was quick, he has regain'd his place,

Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.

"Well done!" cried Francis, "bravely done!" and he rose from where he sat:

"No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."

LEIGH HUNT.

and

Reality