THE PLEASURE-BOAT. COME, hoist the sail, the fast let go! The ripples lightly tap the boat. Loose! Give her to the wind! She shoots ahead: -they're all afloat: The strand is far behind. No danger reach so fair a crew; Fair ladies, fairer than the spray O, might I like those breezes be, Where ye are floating now. The boat goes tilting on the waves; There dips the duck: her back she laves; O'erhead the sea-gulls fly. Now, like the gulls that dart for prey, The little vessel stoops; Now rising, shoots along her way, Like them, in easy swoops. The sun-light falling on her sheet, Sparkling in scorn of summer's heat, The winds are fresh; she's driving fast. Upon the bending tide, The crinkling sail, and crinkling mast, Why dies the breeze away so soon? For, see, the winged fisher's plume Below, a cheek of lovely bloom. She smiles; thou need'st must smile on her; A rich, white cloud that doth not stir. And pictured beach of yellow sand, From that far isle the thresher's flail The leaping fish, the swinging sail The parting sun sends out a glow Touching with glory all the show. - Careening to the wind, they reach, Goddess of Beauty, must I now R. H. DANA. MERRILY BOUNDS THE BARK. MERRILY, merrily bounds the bark, The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch With fluttering sound, like laughter hoarse, The waves, divided by her force, Merrily, merrily bounds the bark, Merrily, merrily goes the bark, On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea. Merrily, merrily, goes the bark, THE INCHCAPE ROCK. SCOTT. No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, Without either sign or sound of their shock, The holy abbot of Aberbrothok Had floated that bell on the Inchcape Rock; And louder and louder its warning rung. |