THE SKY-LARK.

129

A'

ARETHUSA.

RETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,—

From cloud and from crag,

With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains,
She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams ;—
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams :
And gliding and springing,
She went ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,

And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.

Shelley.

THE SKY-LARK.

IRD of the wilderness,

BIR

Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place,-

Oh to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay, and loud,

Far in the downy cloud;

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth !
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven-thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day; Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
Then when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place,

Oh to abide in the desert with thee!

ON THE SEA.

James Hogg.

HE pathway of the sinking moon

TH

Fades from the silent bay;

The mountain-isles loom large and faint,

Folded in shadows gray,

And the lights of land are setting stars
That soon will pass away.

O boatman, cease thy mellow song!
O minstrel, drop thy lyre!

Let us hear the voice of the midnight sea,
Let us speak as the waves inspire,
While the plashy dip of the languid oar
Is a furrow of silver fire.

Day cannot make thee half so fair,

Nor the stars of eve so dear;

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The arms that clasp and the breast that keeps, They tell me thou art near,

And the perfect beauty of thy face

In thy murmured words I hear.

The lights of land have dropped below
The vast and glimmering sea;

The world we leave is a tale that is told,-
A fable that cannot be.

There is no life in the sphery dark

But the love in thee and me!

Bayard Taylor.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

OMETIMES a-dropping from the sky,

SOME

I heard the skylark sing;

Sometimes all little birds that are,

How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments;

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

Coleridge.

WHERE LIES THE LAND?

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?"-
Far, far behind," is all that they can say.

SEEN AND UNSEEN.

"Away,

A. H. Clough.

'HE wind ahead, the billows high,

THI

A whited wave, but sable sky,
And many a league of tossing sea
Between the hearts I love and me.

The wind ahead day after day
These weary words the sailors say;
To weeks the days are lengthened now,-
Still mounts the surge to meet our prow.

SEEN AND UNSEEN.

Through longing day and lingering night
I still accuse Time's lagging flight,

Or gaze out o'er the envious sea,

That keeps the hearts I love from me.

Yet, ah, how shallow is all grief!
How instant is the deep relief!
And what a hypocrite am I

To feign forlorn, to 'plain and sigh!

The wind ahead? The wind is free!
Forevermore it favoreth me,

To shores of God still blowing fair,
O'er seas of God my bark doth bear.

This surging brine I do not sail,
This blast adverse is not my gale;
'Tis here I only seem to be,
But really sail another sea,—

Another sea; pure sky its waves,
Whose beauty hides no hidden graves,
A sea all haven, whereupon

No hapless bark to wreck hath gone.

The winds that o'er my ocean run

Reach through all heavens beyond the sun :

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Through life and death, through fate, through time, Grand breaths of God, they sweep sublime.

Eternal trades, they cannot veer,

And, blowing, teach us how to steer;
And well for him whose joy, whose care,
Is but to keep before them fair.