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I call thee, and thou dost not speak-
They tell me this is death!
And fearful things are whispering
That I the deed have done ;-
For the honour of thy father's name,
Look up, look up, my son !

Well might I know death's hue and mien,
But on thine aspect, boy,
What till this moment have I seen,
Save bright and tameless joy?
Swiftest thou wert to battle,

And bravest there of all:
How could I think a warrior's frame
Thus like a flower should fall?

I will not bear that still, cold look!
Rise up, thou fierce and free!
Wake as the storm wakes! I will brook
All, save this calm, from thee!

Lift brightly up, and proudly,

Once more thy kindling eyes!

Hath my word lost its power on earth?
I say to thee, Arise !

Didst thou not know I loved thee well? Thou didst not, and art gone,

In bitterness of soul to dwell

Where man must dwell alone.

Come back, young fiery spirit!
If but one hour, to learn

The secret of the folded heart,

That seemed to thee so stern.

Thou wert the first, the first fair child
That in mine arms I pressed:

Thou wert the bright one that hast smiled
Like summer on my breast!

I reared thee as an eagle,

To the chase thy steps I led;

I bore thee on my battle-horse,
I look upon thee-dead.

Lay down my warlike banners here,
Never again to wave,

And bury my red sword and spear,

Chiefs! in my first-born's grave;
And leave me !-I have conquered,-

I have slain, my work is done!
Whom have I slain? Ye answer not.
Thou, too, art mute, my son!"

And thus his wild lament was poured

Through the dark resounding night,
And the battle knew no more his sword,
Nor the foaming steed his might.

He heard strange voices moaning

In every wind that sighed ;

From the searching stars of heaven he shrank;—
Humbly the conqueror died.

XXVII-A SHIP SINKING.

(PROFESSOR WILSON.)

John Wilson, late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was born in Paisley in 1785. He died in Edinburgh in 1854. Of his poems, the best known are The Isle of Palms, and City of the Plague; and of his prose works, Recreations of Christopher North, and Noctes Ambrosianae.

-HER giant form,

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
Majestically calm, would go

'Mid the deep darkness white as snow!
But gently now the small waves glide,
Like playful lambs o'er a mountain's side.
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse for ever and aye.
Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast!
-Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!
Five hundred souls, in one instant of dread,

Are hurried o'er the deck;

And fast the miserable ship

Becomes a lifeless wreck!

Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock,

Her planks are torn asunder,

And down come her masts with a reeling shock, And a hideous crash, like thunder!

Her sails are draggled in the brine,

That gladdened late the skies;

And her pendant, that kissed the fair moonshine,
Down many a fathom lies.

Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues
Gleamed softly from below,

And flung a warm and sunny flush
O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow,
To the coral rocks are hurrying down,
To sleep amid colours as bright as their own.
Oh! many a dream was in the ship

An hour before her death;

And sights of home, with sighs, disturbed
The sleeper's long drawn breath.
Instead of the murmur of the sea,
The sailor heard the humming-tree,
Alive through all its leaves,-
The hum of the spreading sycamore
That grows before his cottage door,
And the swallow's song in the eaves;-
His arms enclosed a blooming boy,
Who listened, with tears of sorrow and joy,
To the dangers his father had passed;
And his wife-by turns she wept and smiled.
As she looked on the father of her child
Returned to her heart at last!

--He wakes, at the vessel's sudden roll-
And the rush of waters is in his soul!
Astounded, the reeling deck he paces,
'Mid hurrying forms and ghastly faces;-
The whole ship's crew is there!
Wailings around and overhead-
Brave spirits stupified or dead-
And madness and despair!

Now is the ocean's bosom bare,
Unbroken as the floating air;
The ship hath melted quite away,

Like a struggling dream at break of day.

No image meets my wandering eye,

But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky:

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour dull
Bedims the wave so beautiful;

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown!

XXVIII.-THE CONVICT SHIP.

(HERVEY.)

Thomas Kibble Hervey was born in Manchester in 1804, and died in 1859. He was for some time Editor of the Athenaeum.

MORN on the waters!-and purple and bright
Bursts on the billows the flashing of light;

O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale.
The winds come around her, and murmur, and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along.
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds;
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters, away and away!

Bright, as the visions of youth ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!-
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her and sunshine on high,
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,

"Oh! there be hearts that are breaking, below!"

Night on the waves!—and the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky;

Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light:
Look to the waters! asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!

Who, as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty,-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And souls that are smitten lie bursting within?
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever—
Hearts that are parted, and broken-for ever?
Or dreams that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's
grave?

"Tis thus with our life :-while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,
Gaily we glide in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled:
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes-
But chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs!
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; And the withering thoughts that the world cannot know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore, Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er.

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