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And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the waves his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,
When the myriad voices of Ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore;
Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,

The purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,

Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.

J. G. PERCIVAL.

THE SONG OF THE SEA-SHELL.

I CAME from the ocean, a billow past o'er me,
And, covered with sea-weeds and glittering foam,
I fell on the sands, and a stranger soon bore me,
To deck the gay halls of his far distant home.
Encompassed by exquisite myrtles and roses,
Still, still in the deep I am pining to be,
And the low voice within me my feeling discloses,
And evermore murmurs the sound of the sea.

The skylark at morn pours a carol of pleasure,
At eve the sad nightingale warbles her note;
The harp in our halls nightly sounds a glad measure,
And beauty's sweet songs on the air lightly float.

Yet I sigh for the loud-breaking billows that tost me,
I long to the cool coral caverns to flee;
And when guests with officious intrusion accost me,
I answer them still in the tones of the sea.

Since I left the blue deep, I am ever regretting,
And, mingled with men in the regions above,

I have known them, the ties they once cherished forgetting,

Oft trust to new friendships and cling to new love. Oh! is it so hard to maintain true devotion?

Let mortals who doubt seek a lesson from me:

I am bound by mysterious ties to the ocean,

And no language is mine but the sound of the sea.

MRS. ABDY.

ON A BOOK OF SEA-MOSSES.

THESE many-colored, variegated forms,
Sail to our rougher shores, and rise and fall
To the deep music of the Atlantic wave.
Such spoils we capture where the rainbows drop,
Melting in ocean. Here are broideries strange,
Wrought by the sea-nymphs from their golden hair,
And wove by moonlight. Gently turn the leaf.
From narrow cells, scooped in the rocks, we take

These fairy textures, lightly moored at morn.
Down sunny slopes outstretching to the deep,
We roam at noon, and gather shapes like these.
Note now the painted webs from verdurous isles,
Festooned and spangled in sea-caves, and say
What hues of land can rival tints like those,
Torn from the scarfs and gonfalons of kings
Who dwell beneath the waters?

ARIEL'S SONGS.

J. T. FIELDS.

1.

COME unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands :
Court'sied when you have and kiss'd,

(The wild waves whist!)

Foot it featly here and there;

And sweet sprites, the burden bear.

Hark, hark!

Bowgh, wowgh.

[dispersedly.

The watch-dogs bark.

[dispersedly.

Bowgh, wowgh.

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-doodle-doo.

II.

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell :

[Burden, ding-dong.

Hark, now I hear them; - ding, dong, bell!

SHAKSPEARE.

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 spoom 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, grey 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 for evermore,

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.

C. G. FENNER.

I SAW FROM THE BEACH.

I SAW from the beach, when the morning was shining, A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on;

I came, when the sun o'er that beach was declining, The bark was still there, but the waters were gone!

Ah! such is the fate of our life's early promise;

So passing the spring-tide of joy we have known: Each wave, that we danced o'er at morning, ebbs from

us,

And leaves us at eve, on the bleak shore alone!

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