son of love and laughter,
Of light and life, and pleasure and pain,
And a horror of outer darkness after,
And dust returneth to dust again.
Then the lesser life shall be as the greater,
And the lover of life shall join the hater,
And the one thing cometh sooner or later,
And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

Love of my life! we had lights in season--
Hard to part from, harder to keep--
We had strength to labour and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have HAD our loves and our loving mercies;
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses,
Yet bides the gift of the darkness--sleep!

See! girt with tempest and wing'd with thunder,
And clad with lightning and shod with sleet,
The strong winds treading the swift waves sunder
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on
The sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson,
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun,
That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet.

Oh! brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, or your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never a man has ridden
In your sleepy, swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow'd through straits forbidden,
Where no light wearies and no love wanes.

From the Wreck

"Turn out, boys!"--"What's up with our super. to-night?
The man's mad--Two hours to daybreak I'd swear--
Stark mad--why, there isn't a glimmer of light."
"Take Bolingbroke, Alec, give Jack the young mare;
Look sharp. A large vessel lies jamm'd on the reef,
And many on board still, and some wash'd on shore.
Ride straight with the news--they may send some relief
From the township; and we--we can do little more.
You, Alec, you know the near cuts; you can cross
'The Sugarloaf' ford with a scramble, I think;
Don't spare the blood filly, nor yet the black horse;
Should the wind rise, God help them! the ship will soon sink.
Old Peter's away down the paddock, to drive
The nags to the stockyard as fast as he can--
A life and death matter; so, lads, look alive."
Half-dress'd, in the dark, to the stockyard we ran.

There was bridling with hur