And all we shrink from now may seem

No new revealing,

Familiar as our childhood's stream,

Or pleasant memory of a dream,

The loved and cherished Past upon the new life

stealing.

Serene and mild, the untried light

May have its dawning;

And, as in summer's northern night
The evening and the dawn unite,

The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's

new morning.

I sit alone; in foam and spray
Wave after wave

Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,
Shoulder the broken tide away,

Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy

cleft and cave.

What heed I of the dusty land

And noisy town?

I see the mighty deep expand

From its white line of glimmering sand

To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves

shuts down!

In listless quietude of mind,
I yield to all

The change of cloud and wave and wind;
And passive on the flood reclined,

I wander with the waves, and with them rise

and fall.

But look, thou dreamer! - wave and shore
In shadow lie;

The night-wind warns me back once more
To where, my native hill-tops o'er,

Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset

sky!

So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!
I bear with me

No token stone nor glittering shell,

But long and oft shall Memory tell

Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the

sea.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

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, erelong,
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 Endeavor

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.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

GULF-WEED.

A WEARY weed, tossed to and fro, Drearily drenched in the ocean brine, Soaring high and sinking low,

Lashed along without will of mine;

Sport of the spume of the surging sea;
Flung on the foam, afar and anear,
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.

I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er,

White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.

Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
Something whispers soft to me,
Restless and roaming forevermore,
Like this weary weed of the sea;
Bear they yet on each beating breast
The eternal type of the wondrous whole,
Growth unfolding amidst unrest,
Grace informing with silent soul.

CORNELIUS GEORGE FENNER.

SEA LIFE.

FROM "THE PELICAN ISLAND."

LIGHT as a flake of foam upon the wind
Keel-upward from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled:
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself, alive.
Entranced in contemplation, vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.

It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing;

While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,
Through which mine eyes still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long, light wings, that flung a diamond-

shower

Of dew-drops round its evanescent form, Sprang into light, and instantly descended. Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend, Or mourn his quick departure on the surge,