THE SHORE.

Oh, well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To the haven under the hill;

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

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Tennyson.

CAN

THE SHORE.

AN it be women that walk in the sea-mist under the cliffs there?

Where, 'neath a briny bow, creaming advances the

lip

Of the foam, and out from the sand-choked anchors on to the skiffs there

The long ropes swing through the surge as it tumbles, and glitter and drip.

All the place, in a lurid glimmering emerald glory, Glares like a Titan world come back under heaven

again;

Yonder, up there, are the steeps of the sea-kings famous in story,

But who are they on the beach? They are neither

women nor men.

Who knows.

Are they the land's or the water's living creatures?

Born of the boiling sea? nursed in the seething storms?

With their woman's hair dishevelled over their stern male features,

Striding bare to the knee, magnified maritime forms!

They may be the mothers and wives, they may be the sisters and daughters,

Of men in the dark mid-seas, alone in those blackcoil'd hulls,

That toil 'neath yon white cloud, whence the moon will rise o'er the waters

To-night with her face on fire, if the wind in the evening lulls.

But they may be merely visions, such as only sick men witness

(Sitting, as I sit here, filled with a wild regret),

Framed from the sea's misshapen spume with a horrible fitness

To the winds in which they walk, and the surges by which they are wet.

Salamanders, sea-wolves, witches, warlocks, marinemonsters,

Which the dying seaman beholds when the rats are swimming away,

And an Indian wind 'gins hiss from an unknown isle, and alone stirs

The broken cloud which burns on the verge of the dead red day.

CHILDREN ON THE SHORE.

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I know not. All my mind is confused, nor can I dis

sever

The mould of the visible world from the shape of my

thoughts in me.

The Inward and Outward are fused, and through them murmur for ever

The sorrow whose sound is the wind, and the roar of the limitless sea.

Owen Meredith.

WE

CHILDREN ON THE SHORE.

E are building little homes on the sands,
We are making little rooms very gay,
We are busy with our hearts and our hands,
We are sorry that the time flits away.
Oh, why are the minutes in such haste?

Oh, why don't they leave us to our play?
Our lessons and our meals are such waste!
We can dine very well another day.

We do not mind the tide coming in,
We can dig it a cunning little bed,
Or leave our pretty house and begin

Another pretty house in its stead;
We do not mind the sun in our eyes,

When it makes such a dazzle of the world That we cannot tell the sea from the skies,

Nor look where the flying drops are hurled.

The shells that we gather are so fair,
The birds and the clouds are so kind,
And the winds are so merry with our hair,
It is only the People that we mind!
Papa, if you come so very near,

We can't build the library to-day;
We think you are tired of being here,
And perhaps you would like to go away.

There are just one or two we won't refuse,

If they come by, to help us now and then ; But we want only friends to be of use,

And not all these idle grown men. Perhaps if we hurry very much,

And don't lose an instant of the day, There'll be time for the last lovely touch, Before the sea sweeps it all away!

Anon.

THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD.

DEVEREUX FARM, MARBLEHEAD.

E sat within the farm-house old,

WE

Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,

The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,

The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

THE FIRE OF DRIFTWOOD,

We sat and talked until the night,

Descending, filled the little room, Our faces faded from the sight,

Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,

Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel with secret pain,
Their lives henceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,

And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake

Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make

A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,

The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon the main,

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