Surely may we delight to pause

On our care-goaded road,

Refuged from Time's most bitter laws

In this august abode.

RICHARD, LORD HOUGHTON

[From The Lay of the Humble.]

I

DO remember well, when first

I saw the great blue sea,

It was no stranger-face, that burst

In terror upon me;

My heart began, from the first glance,
His solemn pulse to follow,

I danced with every billow's dance,

And shouted to their hollo.

LORD HOUGHTON.

I

[From The Eld.]

SAW the hoary bulk of ocean

A'couching on the shore,

With a ripple for its motion,

And a murmur for its roar.

LORD HOUGHTON.

[From Songs in Absence.]

I.

COME home, come home! and where is home for me,

Whose ship is driving o'er the trackless sea?

To the frail bark here plunging on its way,

To the wild waters, shall I turn and say

To the plunging bark, or to the salt sea foam,
You are my home.

Fields once I walked in, faces once I knew,
Familiar things so old my heart believed them true,
These far, far back, behind me lie, before

The dark clouds mutter, and the deep seas roar,
And speak to them that 'neath and o'er them roam
No words of home.

Beyond the clouds, beyond the waves that roar,
There may indeed, or may not be, a shore,

Where fields as green, and hands and hearts as true,
The old forgotten semblance may renew,

And offer exiles driven far o'er the salt sea foam,

Another home.

Come home, come home! and where a home hath he

Whose ship is driving o'er the driving sea?

Through clouds that mutter, and o'er waves that roar, Say shall we find, or shall we not, a shore

That is, as is not ship or ocean foam,

Indeed our home?

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

II.

'OME back, come back, behold with straining mast

COME

And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast ;

With one new sun to see her voyage o'er,

With morning light to touch her native shore.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, while westward labouring by,
With sail-less yards, a bare black hulk we fly.
See how the gale we fight with, sweeps her back,
To our lost home, on our forsaken track.

Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, more eager than the breeze,

The flying fancies sweep across the seas,

And lighter far than ocean's flying foam,

The heart's fond message hurries to its home.
Come back, come back.

Come back, come back!

Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back ; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track, Back fly with winds things which the winds obey, The strong ship follows its appointed way.

A. H. CLOUGH

III.

WHERE lies the land to which the ship would go

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

A. H. CLOUGH.

The Sands of Dee.

OMARY, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home

Across the sands of Dee;"

The western wind was wild and dank with 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 eyes could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land :
And never home came she.

"Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair

A tress of golden hair,

A drowned maiden's hair,

Above the nets at sea?

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee."

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

The cruel crawling foam,

The cruel hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea :

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home

Across the sands of Dee.

CHARLES Kingsley.

[From Andromeda.]

ONWARD they came in their joy, and around them the

lamps of the sea-nymphs,

Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows,

Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in starshowers, lighting

Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus,