The fringes of eternity, -
God's sweeping garment-fold,
In that bright shred of glittering sea,
I reach out for and hold.

The sails, like flakes of roseate pearl,
Float in upon the mist;

The waves are broken precious stones,
Sapphire and amethyst

Washed from celestial basement walls,
By suns unsetting kist.

Out through the utmost gates of space,
Past where the gray stars drift,
To the widening Infinite, my soul
Glides on, a vessel swift,
Yet loses not her anchorage
In yonder azure rift.

Here sit I, as a little child;

The threshold of God's door

Is that clear band of chrysoprase;
Now the vast temple floor,
The blinding glory of the dome
I bow my head before.
Thy universe, O God, is home,

In height or depth, to me;
Yet here upon thy footstool green
Content am I to be;

Glad when is oped unto my need
Some sea-like glimpse of Thee.

Lucy Larcom.

THE BURIAL OF THE DANE

THE BURIAL OF THE DANE

BLUE gulf all around us,
Blue sky overhead

Muster all on the quarter,
We must bury the dead!

It is but a Danish sailor,
Rugged of front and form;
A common son of the forecastle,
Grizzled with sun and storm.

His name, and the strand he hailed from
We know, and there's nothing more!
But perhaps his mother is waiting
In the lonely Island of Fohr.

Still, as he lay there dying, Reason drifting awreck, ""T is my watch,” he would mutter, "I must go upon deck!"

Aye, on deck, by the foremast!

But watch and lookout are done;

The Union Jack laid o'er him,

How quiet he lies in the sun!

Slow the ponderous engine,
Stay the hurrying shaft;
Let the roll of the ocean
Cradle our giant craft;
Gather around the grating,
Carry your messmate aft!

121

Stand in order, and listen

To the holiest page of prayer!
Let every foot be quiet,
Every head be bare

The soft trade-wind is lifting
A hundred locks of hair.

Our captain reads the service, (A little spray on his cheeks) The grand old words of burial, And the trust a true heart seeks: "We therefore commit his body

To the deep "— and, as he speaks,

Launched from the weather railing,
Swift as the eye can mark,
The ghastly, shotted hammock
Plunges, away from the shark,
Down, a thousand fathoms,

Down into the dark!

A thousand summers and winters
The stormy Gulf shall roll

High o'er his canvas coffin;

But, silence to doubt and dole: There's a quiet harbor somewhere For the poor aweary soul.

Free the fettered engine,

Speed the tireless shaft,

Loose to'gallant and topsail,
The breeze is fair abaft!

I love to see their dim white forms come floating

through the night,

And grieve to see them fade away in early morning

light.

The first with gnomes in the Under Land is leading a lordly life,

The second has married a mermaiden, a beautiful water-wife.

And since I have friends in the Earth and Sea - with a few, I trust, on high,

"T is a matter of small account to me

the way that

I may die.

For whether I sink in the foaming flood, or swing on the triple tree,

Or die in my bed, as a Christian should, is all the same

to me.

Charles Godfrey Leland.

TYRE

THE wild and windy morning is lit with lurid fire; The thundering surf of ocean beats on the rocks of

Tyre,

Beats on the fallen columns and round the headland

roars,

And hurls its foamy volume along the hollow shores, And calls with hungry clamor, that speaks its long

desire:

"Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?"

Within her cunning harbor, choked with invading sand, No galleys bring their freightage, the spoils of every

land,

And like a prostrate forest, when autumn gales have

blown,

Her colonnades of granite lie shattered and o'er

thrown;

And from the reef the pharos no longer flings its fire, To beacon home from Tarshish the lordly ships of

Tyre.

Where is thy rod of empire, once mighty on the