rth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.
If a storm should come and awake the deep
What matter? _I_ shall ride and sleep.

I love, oh, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloud his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And back I flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she _was_, and _is_, to me,
For I was born on the open sea!

I've lived, since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea.

_Barry Cornwall._

Diffidence

"I'm after axin', Biddy dear--"
And here he paused a while
To fringe his words the merest mite
With something of a smile--
A smile that found its image
In a face of beauteous mold,
Whose liquid eyes were peeping
From a broidery of gold.

"I've come to ax ye, Biddy dear,
If--" then he stopped again,
As if his heart had bubbled o'er
And overflowed his brain.
His lips were twitching nervously
O'er what they had to tell,
And timed the quavers with the eyes
That gently rose and fell.

"I've come--" and then he took her hands
And held them in his own,
"To ax--" and then he watched the buds
That on her cheeks had blown,--
"Me purty dear--" and then he heard
The throbbing of her heart,
That told how love had entered in
And claimed its every part.

"Och! don't be tazin' me," said she,
With just the faintest sigh,
"I've sinse enough to see you've come,
But what's the reason why?"
"To ax--" and once again the tongue
Forbore its sweets to tell,
"To ax--_if Mrs. Mulligan,
Has any pigs to sell_."

Curfew Must Not Ring To-night

Slowly England's sun was setting o'er the hilltops far away,
Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day,
And the last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,--
He with footsteps slow and weary, she with sunny floating hair;
He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful,