All the wide valley blushes green,
While, in far depths below,
Wharfe flashes out a great bright eye,
Then hides his shining flow;--

Wharfe, busy, restless, rapid Wharfe,
The glory of our dale;
O I could of the River Wharfe
Tell such a fairy tale!

"The Boy of Egremond," you cry,--
"And all the 'bootless bene:'
We know that poem, every word,
And we the Strid have seen."

No, clever damsels: though the tale
Seems still to bear a part,
In every lave of Wharfe's bright wave,
The broken mother's heart--

Little you know of broken hearts,
My Kitty, blithe and wise,
Grave Mary, with the woman soul
Dawning through childish eyes.

And long, long distant may God keep
The day when each shall know
The entrance to His kingdom through
His baptism of woe!

But yet 'tis good to hear of grief
Which He permits to be;
Even as in our green inland home
We talk of wrecks at sea.

So on this lovely day, when spring
Wakes soft o'er moor and dale,
I'll tell--not quite your wish--but yet
A noble "fairy" tale.

* * * * *

'Twas six o'clock in the morning,
The sea like crystal lay,
When the good troop-ship Birkenhead
Set sail from Simon's Bay.

The Cape of Good Hope on her right
Gloomed at her through the noon:
Brief tropic twilight fled, and night
Fell suddenly and soon.

At eight o'clock in the evening
Dim grew the pleasant land;
O'er smoothest seas the southern heaven
Its starry arch out-spanned.

The soldiers on the bulwarks leaned,
Smoked, chatted; and below
The soldiers' wives sang babes to sleep,
While on the ship sailed slow.

Six hundred and thirty souls held she,
Good, bad, old, young, rich, poor;
Six hundred and thirty living souls--
God knew them all.--Secure

He counted them in His right hand,
That held the hungering seas;
And to four hundred came a voice--
"The Master h