Romance and

Reality

The "Gray Swan"

"Oh, tell me, sailor, tell me true,
Is my little lad, my Elihu,

A-sailing with your ship?"

The sailor's eyes were dim with dew.
"Your little lad, your Elihu?"

He said with trembling lip,—
"What little lad? what ship?"

"What little lad? as if there could be
Another such a one as he!

What little lad, do you say?

Why Elihu, that took to the sea

The moment I put him off my knee!

It was just the other day

The Gray Swan' sailed away.'

"The other day?" The sailor's eyes
Stood open with a great surprise:
"The other day? the 'Swan '?”

His heart began in his throat to rise.

66

Ay, ay, sir, here in the cupboard lies

The jacket he had on."

"And so your lad is gone?"

6

66

"Gone with the Swan '? ”—“ And did she stand

With her anchor clutching hold of the sand
For a month, and never stir?"

"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!"

Romance

and Reality

"But, my good mother, do

you

All this was twenty years ago?

know

I stood on the 'Gray Swan's' deck, And to that lad I saw you throw, Taking it off as it might be,-so!The kerchief from your neck."

"And did the little lawless lad,

That has made you sick and made you sad,
Sail with the Gray Swan's' crew?"
"Lawless! The man is going mad!
The best boy ever mother had!—
Be sure he sailed with the crew!
What would you have him do?"

"And has he never written line,
Nor sent you word, nor made you sign,

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 "Gone twenty years, a long, long cruise!
and 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse!
Reality
But if the lad still live,

And come back home, think you you can
Forgive him?" "Miserable man!

You're mad as the sea, you rave!
What have I to forgive?"

The sailor twitched his shirt so blue,
And from within his bosom drew
The kerchief. She was wild.
"O God, my Father! is it true?
My little lad, my Elihu!

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 daughtèr

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,

Romance and

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow Reality

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,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;

Romance He cut a rope

and

Reality

66

66

from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

O father! I hear the church-bells ring;

O say, what may it be?"

""T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"

And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

“O father I see a gleaming light;

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.