What tale do the roaring ocean, And why do the roaring ocean, H. W. LONGFELLOW. SEE where, upon the blue and waveless deep, Comes forth the silent Moon! Now, Music, wake from out thy charméd sleep ; And bid thy sweet soul weep Her life away in some immortal tune! Or let thy soaring spirit run Aloft upon some wild enchanted air, Before whose breath despair Dies, like a mist before the uprisen sun! BARRY CORNWALL. THE FISHERMEN. THREE fishers went sailing out into the West, Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town; For men must work, and women must weep, Three wives sat up in the light-house tower And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down, And they looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the rack it came rolling up, ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, Three corpses lay out on the shining sands In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are watching and wringing their hands, CHARLES KINGSLEY. MOONRISE. ABOVE the headlands massy, dim, The globe, o'erhanging bright and brave The pale green-glimmering ocean-floor, Silvers its wave, its rustling wave Soft folded on the shelving shore. O lonely moon, a lonely place WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, GLIDE ON, MY BARK. GLIDE on, my bark; the summer's tide Around thy prow, the waters bright, Her countless gems to deck the wave; Whilst moonlight shines like mimic dayGlide on, my bark, thy moonlit way. Glide on, my bark! how sweet to rove, O'er the dark sea, whose murmurs seem, No sound is heard to break the spell, ANONYMOUS. THE EVENING STAR. Just above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer. Into the ocean faint and far Falls the trail of its golden splendor, And the gleam of that single star Chrysaor rising out of the sea, Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe, For ever tender, soft, and tremulous. Thus o'er the ocean faint and far Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly; Is it a God, or is it a star That, entranced, I gaze on nightly! H. W. LONGfellow. |