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!

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

SONGS.

SEA-WEED.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;—
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:
From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavour
That forever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;-
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.

THE DAY IS DONE.

THE day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall load their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

THE day is ending,

The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes,
The red sun flashes

On village windows

That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;

The buried fences

Mark no longer

The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,

Slowly passes

A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds

To the dismal knell;

Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing,
And toiling within

Like a funeral bell.

TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK.

WELCOME, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,

While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee.

There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin,

Made by hands that clasped thee rudely, At the ale-house.

Soiled and dull thou art;

Yellow are thy time-worn pages,

H

As the russet, rain molested
Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As these leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,—

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,

Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,

Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes,

Where thy songs of love and friendship

Made the gloomy Northern winter

Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,

Chanted staves of these old ballads

To the Vikings.

Once in Elsinore,

At the court of old King Hamlet,

Yorick and his boon companions

Sang these ditties.

Once Prince Frederick's Guard

Sang them in their smoky barracks ;

Suddenly the English cannon

Joined the chorus!

Peasants in the field,

Sailors on the roaring ocean,

Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,

All have sung them.

Thou hast been their friend;

They, alas! have left thee friendless!
Yet at least by one warm fireside
Art thou welcome.