rough the time of darkness went
With wanton winds, now, heavy-hearted, came
And fell upon the sunshine, penitent,
And burning up with shame.

The grass was wet with dew; the sheep-fields lay
Lapping together far as eye could see;
And the great harvest hung the golden way
Of Nature's charity.

My house was full of comfort; I was propped
With life's delights, all sweet as they could be,
When at my door a wretched woman stopped,
And, weeping, said to me,--

"Its rose-root in youth's seasonable hours
Love in thy bosom set, so blest wert thou;
Hence all the pretty little red-mouthed flowers
That climb and kiss thee now!

"_I_ loved, but _I_ must stifle Nature's cries
With old dry blood, else perish, I was told;
Hence the young light shrunk up within my eyes,
And left them blank and bold.

"I take my deeds, all, bad as they have been,--
The way was dark, the awful pitfall bare;--
In my weak hands, up through the fires of sin,
I hold them for my prayer."

"The thick, tough husk of evil grows about
Each soul that lives," I mused, "but doth it kill?
When the tree rots, the imprisoned wedge falls out,
Rusted, but iron still.

"Shall He who to the daisy has access,
Reaching it down its little lamp of dew
To light it up through earth, do any less,
Last and best work, for you?"

SONGS OF THE SEA.

Not Dibdin's; not Barry Cornwall's; not Tom Campbell's; not any of the
"Pirate's Serenades" and "I'm afloats!" which appear in the music-shop-
windows, illustrated by lithographic vignettes of impossible ships in
impracticable positions. These are sung by landsmen yachting in still
waters and in sight of green fields, by romantic young ladies in
comfortable and unmoving drawing-rooms to the tinkling of Chickering's
pianos. What are the songs the sailor sings to the accompaniment of the
thrilling shrouds, the booming double-bass of the hollow topsails, and the
multitudinous chorus of Ocean? What does the coaster, in his brief walk
"three steps and overboard," hum to himself, as he tramps up and down his
little deck through the swathing mists of a Bank fog? What sings the cook
at the galley-fire in doleful unison with the bubble of his coppers?
Surely not songs that exult in the life of the sea. Certainly not, my
amateur friend, anything that breathes of mastery over the elements. The
sea is a real thing to him. He never is familiar with it, or thinks of it
or speaks of it as his sl