* * * * *

"It's five-and-forty year since then,"
Muttered the boatman grey,
And drew his rough hand o'er his eyes,
And stared across the bay;
"Just five-and-forty year," and not
Another word did say.

"But Dolly?" ask the children all,
As they about him stand.
"Poor Doll! she floated back next tide
With sea-weed in her hand.
She's buried o'er that hill you see,
In a churchyard on land.

"But where Dick lies, God knows! He'll find
Our Dick at Judgment-day."
The boatman fell to mending nets,
The boys ran off to play;
And the sun shone and the waves danced
In quiet Swanage Bay.

BALLAD OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

BY GEORGE HENRY BOKER.

"O, whither sail you, SIR JOHN FRANKLIN?"
Cried a whaler in Baffin's Bay.
"To know if between the land and the pole
I may find a broad sea-way."

"I charge you back, SIR JOHN FRANKLIN,
As you would live and thrive;
For between the land and the frozen pole
No man may sail alive."

But lightly laughed the stout Sir John,
And spoke unto his men:
"Half England is wrong, if he is right;
Bear off to westward then."

"O, whither sail you, SIR JOHN FRANKLIN?"
Cried the little Esquimaux.
"Between your land and the polar star
My goodly vessels go."

"Come down, if you would journey there,"
The little Indian said;
"And change your cloth for fur clothing,
Your vessel for a sled."

But lightly laughed the stout Sir John,
And the crew laughed with him, too:--
"A sailor to change from ship to sled,
I ween were something new!"

All through the long, long polar day,
The vessels westward sped;
And wherever the sails of Sir John were blown,
The ice gave way and fled:

Gave way with many a hollow groan,
And with many a surly roar;
But it murmured and threatened on every side,
And closed where he sailed before.

"Ho! see ye not, my merry men,
The broad and open sea?
Bethink ye what the whaler said,
Think of the little Indian's sled!"
The crew laughed ou