ickets be."

"And oh!" says he, "what leetle bird
Is singing in yon high tree,
So every shrill and long-drawn note
Like bubbles breaks in me?"

Says I, "It is the mavis
That perches in the tree,
And sings so shrill, and sings so sweet,
When dawn comes up the sea."

At which he fell a-musing,
And fixed his eye on me,
As one alone 'twixt light and dark
A spirit thinks to see.

"England!" he whispers soft and harsh,
"England!" repeated he,
"And briar, and rose, and mavis,
A-singing in yon high tree.

"Ye speak me true, my leetle son,
So--so, it came to me,
A-drifting landwards on a spar,
And grey dawn on the sea.

"Ay, ay, I could not be mistook;
I knew them leafy trees,
I knew that land so witchery sweet,
And that old noise of seas.

"Though here I've sailed a score of years,
And heard 'em, dream or wake,
Lap small and hollow 'gainst my cheek,
On sand and coral break;

"'Yet now,' my leetle son, says I,
A-drifting on the wave,
'That land I see so safe and green,
Is England, I believe.

"'And that there wood is English wood,
And this here cruel sea,
The selfsame old blue ocean
Years gone remembers me.

"'A-sitting with my bread and butter
Down ahind yon chitterin' mill;
And this same Marinere'--(that's me),
'Is that same leetle Will!--

"'That very same wee leetle Will
Eating his bread and butter there,
A-looking on the broad blue sea
Betwixt his yaller hair!'

"And here be I, my son, thrown up
Like corpses from the sea,
Ships, stars, winds, tempests, pirates past,
Yet leetle Will I be!"

He said no more, that sailorman,
But in a reverie
Stared like the figure of a ship
With painted eyes to sea.

THE PHANTOM

"Upstairs in the large closet, child,
This side the blue room door,
Is an old Bible, bound in leather,
Standing upon the floor;

"Go with this taper, bring it me;
Carry it so, upon your arm;
It is the book on many a sea
Hath stilled the waves' alarm."

Late the hour, dark the night,
The house is solitary;
Feeble is a taper's light
To light poor Ann to see.

Her eyes are yet with visions bright
Of sylph and river, flower and fay,
Now through a narrow corridor
She goes her lonely way.

Vast shadows on the heedless walls
Gigantic loom, stoop low:
Each little hasty footfall calls
Hollowly to and fro.

In the cold solitude her heart
Remembers sorrowfully
White winters when her mother