And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast;

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

AMY ROBSART AND RICHARD VARNEY.

FROM "KENILWORTH."

Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth, having recently married Amy Robsart, has concealed her at Cumnor Place, fearing that, if his marriage is made public, he may lose court favor. The Queen, who has been led to believe that Amy is the wife of the Earl's unprincipled servant Varney, orders her to be present at the approaching festivities at Kenilworth Castle. Influenced by the designing Varney, Leicester writes a letter to Amy, conjuring her, for reasons nearly concerning his own life and honor, to come to Kenilworth as the supposed wife of his servant. Varney himself is the bearer of the letter. He enters the apartments of the Countess, his dress in disorder from hasty riding through a dark night and foul ways.

"You bring news from my lord, Master VarneyGracious Heaven! is he ill?"

"No, madam, thank Heaven! Compose yourself, and permit me to take breath ere I communicate my tidings.

"No breath, sir; I know your theatrical arts. Since your breath hath sufficed to bring you hither, it may suffice to tell your tale, at least briefly, and in the gross.

"Madam, we are not alone, and my lord's message was for your ear only."

"Leave us, Janet, and Master Foster, but remain in the next apartment, and within call."

Foster and his daughter retired, agreeably to the Lady Leicester's commands, into the next apartment.

All was as still as death, and the voices of those who spoke in the inner chamber were, if they spoke at all, carefully subdued to a tone which could not be heard in the next. At once, however, they were heard to speak fast, thick, and hastily.

"Undo the door, sir, I command you! Undo the door! I will have no other reply! What ho! without there! Janet, alarm the house! Foster, break open the door-I am detained here by a traitor! Use axe and lever, Master Foster-I will be your warrant!"

"It shall not need, madam; if you please to expose my lord's important concerns and your own to the general ear, I will not be your hindrance.

Janet, as soon as the door was open, ran to her mistress; and more slowly, yet with more haste than he was wont, Anthony Foster went to Richard Varney.

"What in the name of Satan, have you done to her?" said Foster to his friend.

"Who, I-nothing, nothing but communicated to her her lord's commands, which, if the lady list not to obey, she knows better how to answer it than I may pretend to do." "Now, by Heaven, Janet, the false traitor lies in his throat! He must needs lie, for he speaks to the dishonor of my noble lord; he must needs lie doubly, for he speaks to gain ends of his own, equally execrable and unattainable." "You have misapprehended me, lady; let this matter rest till your passion be abated, and I will explain all."

"Thou shalt never have an opportunity to do so," said the Countess. "Look at him, Janet. He is fairly dressed, hath the outside of a gentleman, and hither he came to persuade me it was my lord's pleasure—nay, more, my wedded lord's command, that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him-him there, that very cloak-brushing, shoecleaning fellow—him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband; furnishing against myself, great God! whenever I was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would hew my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be regarded as an honorable matron of the English nobility!"

"You hear her, Foster, and you, young maiden, hear this lady; you hear that her heat only objects to me the course which our good lord, for the purpose to keep certain matters secret, suggests in the very letter which she holds in her hands.

"Never will I believe that the noble Dudley gave countenance to so dastardly, so dishonorable a plan. Thus I tread on his infamy, if indeed it be, and thus destroy its remembrance forever!"

So saying, she tore in pieces Leicester's letter, and stamped, in the extremity of impatience, as if she would have annihilated the minute fragments into which she had rent it.

"Bear witness, she hath torn my lord's letter, in order to burden me with the scheme of his devising; and although it promises naught but danger and trouble to me, she would lay it to my charge, as if it had any purpose of mine own in it.”

"Thou liest, thou treacherous slave! Thou liest! Let me go, Janet. Were it the last word I have to speak, he lies; he had his own foul ends, and broader he would have displayed them, had my passion permitted me to preserve the silence which at first encouraged him to unfold his vile projects."

"Madam, I entreat you to believe yourself mistaken." “As soon will I believe light darkness. Have I drank of oblivion? Do I not remember former passages, which, known to Leicester, had given thee the preferment of a gallows, instead of the honor of this intimacy? I would I were a man but for five minutes! It were space enough to make a craven like thee confess his villainy. But go! begone! Tell thy master, that when I take the foul course to which such scandalous deceits as thou hast recommended on his behalf must necessarily lead me, I will give him a rival something worthy of the name. He shall not be supplanted by an ignominious lackey, whose best fortune is to catch a gift of his master's last suit of clothes ere it is threadbare. Go! begone, sir! I scorn thee so much, that I am ashamed to have been angry with thee." Sir Walter Scott.

THE COUNTESS AMY AND HER HUSBAND.

FROM KENILWORTH."

Amy Robsart was confined in a room in one of the towers, while Queen Elizabeth, attended by court-ladies and gentlemen, went on a hunting expedition. When they returned, Lord Leicester determined to see Amy. Disguised as a servant of Varney, who had free access to Amy's room under the character of her husband, Lord Leicester passed the sentinel in safety, and entered the room.

"Dudley!" she exclaimed, "Dudley! and art thou come at last?" And with the speed of lightning she flew to her husband, hung round his neck, and, unheeding the presence of Varney, overwhelmed him with caresses, while she bathed his face in a flood of tears; muttering, at the same time, but in broken and disjointed monosyllables, the fondest expressions which Love teaches his votaries.

He received and repaid her caresses with fondness mingled with melancholy, the last of which she seemed. scarcely to observe, until the first transport of her own

joy was over; when, looking anxiously in his face, she asked if he was ill.

"Not in my body, Amy," was his answer.

"Then I will be well, too.-O Dudley! I have been ill!-very ill, since we last met! I have been in sickness, in grief, and in danger. But thou art come, and all is joy and health, and safety!"

"Alas! Amy," said Leicester, "thou hast undone me!" "I, my lord?" said Amy, her cheek at once losing its transient flush of joy-"how could I injure that which I love better than myself?"

"I would not upbraid you, Amy," replied the earl; "but are you not here contrary to my express commands -and does not your presence here endanger both yourself and me?"

"Does it, does it, indeed!" she exclaimed eagerly: "then why am I here a moment longer? Oh, if you knew by what fears I was urged to quit Cumnor Place!-but I will say nothing of myself-only that if it might be otherwise, I would not willingly return thither;-yet if it concern your safety

"We will think, Amy, of some other retreat," said Leicester; "you shall go to one of my northern castles, under the personage-it will be but needful, I trust, for a very few days-of Varney's wife."

"How, my lord of Leicester!" said the lady, disengaging herself from his embraces; "is it to your wife you give the dishonorable counsel to acknowledge herself the bride of another-and of all men, the bride of that Varney?"

"Madam, I speak it in earnest; Varney is my true and faithful servant, trusted in my deepest secrets. I had better lose my right hand than his service at this moment. You have no cause to scorn him as you do."

"I could assign one, my lord, and I see he shakes even under that assured look of his. But he that is necessary as your right hand to your safety, is free from any accusation of mine. May he be true to you; and that he may be true, trust him not too far. But it is enough to say, that I will not go with him unless by violence, nor would I acknowledge him as my husband, were all"

"It is a temporary deception, madam, necessary for both our safeties, endangered by you through female