The ship hath melted quite away,

Like a struggling dream at break of day.
No image meets my wandering eye,

But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky.

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapor dull Bedims the waves so beautiful;

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown.

A WHITE Sail gleaming on the flood,
And the bright-orbed sun on high,
Are all that break the solitude

Of the circling sea and sky;-
Nor cloud, nor cape is imaged there,
Nor isle of ocean, nor of air.

Led by the magnet o'er the tides,
That bark her path explores,-
Sure as unerring instinct guides
The bird to unseen shores :

With wings that o'er the waves expand,
She wanders to a viewless land.

Go with her wandering sail;

And bright eyes watch through gathering tears,
Its distant cloud to hail;

And prayers for her, at midnight lone,
Ascend, unheard by all, save One.

And not alone; - for round her glow

The vital light and air :

And something that, in whispers low,

Tells to man's spirit there,
Upon her waste and weary road,
A present, all-pervading God!

LESSON XC.

The Wonders of the Deep.-J. PIERPONT.

I HAVE often thought, that what Corporal Trim is made to say of a soldier—that he ought to be one of the most religious men in the world-might, with equal, or still greater propriety, be said of a sailor. His voyages, carrying him to various parts of the globe, bring him into contact with a great variety of the Creator's works, which, by their novelty, con

tinually excite his attention, and should lead him to admire what we may call their multitudinous beauty. The terrible strength of the ocean in a storm, awakening his sentiment of the sublime; the unbroken view that he enjoys of the starry concave that rolls silently over him, in his "night watches," leading his thoughts up to the Infinite Being, who dwells in the infinity of its depths; and the feeling of something of the real dangers that surround him, in icebergs and tempests, leaks, lightnings and lee-shores, should, and it might be ex pected, almost of necessity, would prompt him to put himself in the spirit of a filial trust, under the protection of Him, "who sitteth on the floods." It seems to me, that his very position among the works of God, and his professional observation of His ways, would lead the mariner into a constant and close communion with the "Lord of the seas." One would think that he could hardly "heave the lead," and hear it plunge into the green abyss, without its bringing to his mind what one of the Hebrew minstrels - whether David or not we are not told, but doubtless some one who had been a voyager in the Mediterranean, and had known something of the effects of "a Levanter"—says of all them "who go down to the sea in ships," that they "see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep."

And first, what a wonder is the sea itself!-How wide does it stretch out its arms, clasping islands and continents in its embrace! How mysterious are its depths! still more mysterious its hoarded and hidden treasure! With what weight do its watery masses roll onward to the shore, when not a breath of wind is moving over its surface! How wonderfully fearful it is, when its waves, in mid ocean, are foaming and tossing their heads in anger under the lash of the tempest! How wonderfully beautiful, when, like a melted and evermoving mirror, it reflects the setting sun, or the crimson clouds or the saffron heavens after the sun has set or when

its "watery floor" breaks into myriads of fragments the image of the quiet moon, that falls upon it from the skies!

Wonderful, too, are those hills of ice that break off, in thunder, from the frozen barriers of the pole, and float towards the sun, their bristling pinnacles glistening in his beams, and slowly wasting away under his power, an object at once of wonder and of dread to the mariner, till they are lost in the embrace of more genial deeps. — And that current is a wonder, which moves forever onward from the southern seas to the colder latitudes, bearing in its waters the influence of a tropi cal sun, and saying to the icebergs from the pole, "Hitherto may ye come, but no further." And, if possible, still more wonderful are those springs of fresh water, which, among the Indian isles, gush up from the depths of a salt ocean, a source of refreshment and life to the seaman who is parching with thirst "beneath a burning sky." And is it not as wonderful, when, not a spring of fresh water, but a column of volcanic fire shoots up from "the dark unfathomed caves of ocean," and throws its red glare far over the astonished waves, that heave and tremble with the heaving and trembling earth below them! wonderful, when that pillar of fire vanishes, leaving a smoking volcano in its place! and wonderful, when that volcano, in its turn, sinks back and is lost in the depths whence it rose !

Then there are other wonders, in the living creatures of the deep, from the animalcule, that "no eye can see," and that scarcely "glass can reach," up to "that Leviathan which God hath made to play therein." In "this great and wide sea are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts." Yet He who hath made them all, even there openeth his hand and satisfieth the desires of all. Wonderful is it, that, of these "creatures innumerable," each one finds its food in some other, and, in its turn, serves some other for food; and that this great work of destruction and reproduction goes on, in an unbroken circle, from age to age, in the deep silence of those

still deeper waters where the power of man is neither felt nor feared!

What a wonder, too, is that line of phosphoric light, which, in the darkest night, streams along "the way of a ship in the midst of the sea!"—What is it that gives out this fire, which, like that of love, "many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown it!" Theorists may speculate, naturalists may examine, chemists may analyze, but none of them can explain; and all agree in this, that it is a wonder, a mystery, a marvel. A light that only motion kindles! a fire that burns nothing! a fire, too, seen. not in a bush of Horeb, which is not burned, but in the deep waters of the ocean that cannot be ? Is not this a wonder?

And, if that path of light is a wonder, which streams back from the rudder of a ship, is not that ship itself a wonder? That a fabric so gigantic, as a first-rate ship, of traffic or of war, framed of ponderous timbers, compacted with bolts and bands of still more ponderous iron, holding in its bosom masses of merchandise, under whose weight strong cars have groaned, and paved streets trembled; or bearing on its decks hosts of armed men, with the thundering armament of a nation — that a fabric thus framed and thus freighted, should float in a fluid, into which, if a man fall, he sinks, and is lost, is in itself a wonder. But that such a fabric should traverse oceans, struggling on amid the strife of seas and storms, that it should hold on its way like "a thing of life," nay, like a thing of intellect, a being endued with courage, and stimulated by a high purpose, a traveler that has seen the end of his voyage from the beginning, that goes forth upon it without fear, and completes it as with the feeling of a triumph, is, as it seems to me, a greater wonder still.

Let me ask you to stand, as you perhaps have stood, upon the deck of such a ship,

"In the dead waste and middle of the night,"

now in the strong light of the moon, as it looks down upon