The mourners at her stern,--
And one shall go the silent way
Who shall no more return!

And men shall sigh, and women weep,
Whose dear ones pale and pine,
And sadly over sunset seas
Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled
By pity's tender breath,
Nor see the Angel at the helm
Who steers the Ship of Death!
1866.

. . . . .

"Chill as a down-east breeze should be,"
The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch
The legend has. I'm glad to see
Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch."
"Well, here is something of the sort
Which one midsummer day I caught
In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish."
"We wait," the Traveller said;
"serve hot or cold your dish."

THE PALATINE.

Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees, the
isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred
years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship bound for
Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point.
A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the
crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and
madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but
one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven out to
sea before a gale which had sprung up. Every twelvemonth, according to
the same tradition, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the
inhabitants of the island.

Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!

Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,

Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,

Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.

Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!

But in summer time, when pool and pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;

When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose,
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose