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But now the clouds, in angry crowds,

On heaven's grim forehead muster,
And wild and wide sweeps o'er the tide
The white squall's fitful bluster.

The stout ship heels, the brave heart reels
Before the 'whelming breaker;
And all in nature quakes, and feels
The presence of its Maker.

O, glorious still in every form,
Untamed, untrodden ocean;
Beneath the sunshine or the storm,
In stillness or commotion;
Be mine to dwell beside the swell,
A witness of thy wonders;

Feel thy light spray around me play,
And thrill before thy thunders!

While yet a boy I felt it joy

To gaze upon thy glories;
I loved to ride thy stormy tide,

And shout in joyous chorus.
With calmer brow I haunt thee now

To nurse sublime emotion;

My soul is awed, and filled with God,

By thee, majestic ocean.

THE CHARITIES OF THE POOR.

THERE is a thought so purely blest,

That to its use I oft repair,

LYTE.

When evil breaks my spirit's rest,
And pleasure is but varied care;
A thought to gild the stormiest skies,

To deck with flowers the bleakest moorA thought whose home is Paradise,

The charities of poor to poor.

It were not for the rich to blame,

If they, whom fortune seems to scorn,
Should vent their ill-content and shame
On others less or more forlorn:
But, that the veriest needs of life

Should be dispensed with freer hand,
Than all their stores and treasures rife-
Is not for them to understand.

To give the stranger's children bread,
Of your precarious board the spoil,
To watch your helpless neighbour's bed,
And sleepless meet the morrow's toil;
The gifts, not proffered once alone,
The daily sacrifice of years;

And when all else to give is gone,

The precious gifts of love and tears!

Therefore, lament not, honest soul!

That Providence holds back from thee The means thou might'st so well controlThose luxuries of charity.

Manhood is nobler, as thou art;

And, should some chance thy coffers fill, How art thou sure to keep thine heart,

To hold unchanged thy loving will?

Wealth, like all other power, is blind,

And bears a poison in its core,
To taint the best, if feeble, mind,

And madden that debased before.
It is the battle, not the prize,

That fills the hero's breast with joy;
And industry the bliss supplies,

Which mere possession might destroy.

MONCKTON MILNES.

THE CONVICT SHIP.

MORN on the waters! and purple and bright,
Bursts on the billows the flashing of light;

O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale;
The winds come around her, and murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along.
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds :
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters, away and away!
Bright as the visions of youth ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her, and sunshine on high,
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,
O! there be hearts that are breaking below.

Night on the waves! and the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky,

Treading its depths in the power of her might,

And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light;
Look to the waters! asleep on their breast,

Seems not the ship like an island of rest?

Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!
Who, as she smiles in the silvery light,

Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And souls that are smitten lie bursting within!
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts that are parted and broken for ever?
Or dreams that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's grave?
'Tis thus with our life: while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,
Gaily we glide in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurled ;
All gladness and glory, to wandering eyes,

Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs:
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears;

And the withering thoughts that the world cannot know, Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore,

Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er.

HERVEY.

THE SHADOWS.

WHO has not felt, 'mid azure skies,

At glowing noon, or golden even, A soft and mellow sadness rise,

And tinge with earth the hues of heaven!

That shadowing consciousness will steal
O'er every scene of fond desire;
Linger in laughter's gayest peal,
And close each cadence of the lyre.

In the most radiant landscape's round,
Lurk the dim thoughts of crime and care;
Man's toil must plough the teeming ground,
His sigh must load the perfumed air.

O for the suns that never part,

The fields with hues unfading drest;

The unfalt'ring strain, th' unclouded heart,
The joy, the triumph, and the rest.

EARL OF CARLISLE.

ON THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

PROUDLY on Cressy's tented wold
The lion-flag of England flew ;
As proudly gleamed its crimson fold

O'er the dun heights of Waterloo:
But other lyres shall greet the brave;
Sing now,
that we have freed the slave.

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