132

THE MERRY LARK WAS UP AND SINGING.

The lulling stream that soothed thy dream
Is dancing in the sunny beam.

Waste not these hours, so fresh, so gay:
Leave thy soft couch, and haste away!

Up! Time will tell the morning bell
Its service-sound has chimèd well;
The aged crone keeps house alone,
The reapers to the fields are gone.
Lose not these hours, so cool, so gay:
Lo! while thou sleep'st they haste away!

JOANNA BAILLIE.

THE MERRY LARK WAS UP AND SINGING.

THE merry, merry lark was up and singing,
And the hare was out and feeding on the lea,
And the merry, merry bells below were ringing,
When my child's laugh rang through me.

Now the hare is snared, and dead beside the snow-yard,
And the lark beside the dreary winter sea,

And my baby in his cradle in the churchyard
Waiteth there until the bells bring me.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

IT was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter, 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;

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

"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.

134

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
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 daughter,

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;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

“O father, I hear the church-bells ring!
O say what may it be?"

"'Tis 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!"

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

"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.

And ever, the fitful gusts between,
A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows:
She drifted a dreary wreck;

And a whooping billow swept the crew,
Like icicles, from her deck.

135

136

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

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!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW