GENERAL

A PASSER-BY

Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away fair rover, and what thy quest? Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales oppressed,

When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest

In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.

I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,

Already arrived, am inhaling the odorous air: I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest, And anchor queen of the strange shipping there, Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare: Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snowcapped grandest

Peak, that is over the feathery palms, more fair Than thou, so upright, so stately and still thou standest.

And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blame-
less,

Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,

As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.
ROBERT BRIDGES.

NIGHT AT SEA

A brooding silence of stars, and a path of light Where the ship wakes fleeting fires in the sea's calm night.

The swift typhoon may leap from a sudden cloud And these waves turn cruel as hate and white as a shroud,

But to-night the sombre sweetness of sea and sky
Is hushed as the touch of your lips when we said good-

bye.

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR.

TO THE OCEAN

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin, his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he
wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth-there let him lay.