Subsides the breeze; the untroubled waves repose;
The scene is peaceful all. Can Death be nigh,
When thus, mute and unarm'd, his vassals lie?
Mark ye that cloud! There toils the imprisoned gale;
E'en now it comes, with voice uplifted high;
Resound the shores, harsh screams the rending sail,
And roars th' amazed wave, and bursts the thunder peal!

Three days the tempest raged; on Scotia's shore
Wreck piled on wreck, and corse o'er corse was thrown;
Her rugged cliffs were red with clotted gore;
Her dark caves echoed back th' expiring moan;
And luckless maidens mourned their lovers gone,
And friendless orphans cried in vain for bread;
And widow'd mothers wandered forth alone;--
Restore, O wave, they cried,--restore our dead!
And then the breast they bared, and beat th' unsheltered head.

Of thee, my Sire, what mortal tongue can tell!
No friendly bay thy shattered barque received;
Ev'n when thy dust reposed in ocean cell,
Strange baseless tales of hope thy friends deceived
Which oft they doubted sad, or gay believed.
At length, when deeper, darker, wax'd the gloom,
Hopeless they grieved; but 'twas in vain they grieved:
If God be truth, 'tis sure no voice of doom,
That bids the accepted soul its robes of joy assume."

I had been sent, previous to my father's death, to a dame's school,
where I was taught to pronounce my letters to such effect in the old
Scottish mode, that still, when I attempt spelling a word aloud, which
is not often,--for I find the process a perilous one,--the _aa's_ and
_ee's_, and _uh's_ and _vaus_, return upon me and I have to translate
them with no little hesitation as I go along, into the more modish
sounds. A knowledge of the letters themselves I had already acquired by
studying the signposts of the place,--rare works of art, that excited my
utmost admiration, with jugs, and glasses, and bottles, and ships, and
loaves of bread upon them; all of which could, as the artists had
intended, be actually recognised. During my sixth year I spelt my way,
under the dame, through the Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New
Testament, and then entered upon her highest form, as a member of the
Bible class; but all the while the process of acquiring learning had
been a dark one, which I slowly mastered, in humble confidence in the
awful wisdom of the school