Would I live my life with thee;
Pacing happily together
Through each change of human weather;
While within us, and around us
Love's rich skies shall light and bound us :
Then, come, fairest, come,
List ! my heart is beating wi' thee,
Come, come, come, come
Dear, my sweet, I prythee.
74
Thus tuned to noontide's warm dispose
The gallant voiced his listless lay;
'Till from the splendrous cloud that rose
A-south above the level bay,
Conies slowly on a floating shower,
And folds in vapour hill and plain;
The big drops strike on roof and bower;
The lake is switched with drifts of rain :
Up spring the group and mid the sprays
Of thickest foliage make their home,
Like nymphs and gods of ancient days
Beneath some forest temple's dome;
And as the phantom slants its wing
Mid disentangling woofs of blue,
A while no sound disturbs the wave
Of silence, spreading greyly, save
From patter-ings of the leafy dew,
Or tonings of some fingered string.
But now the day begins to wane;
The forest tops in sunset rolled,
Across the hazy wheateii plain
Wave from the west farewells of gold :
The terrace fountains flame; they see
Along the tranquil spacing brine
White summits flash, and distantly
The purple mountains rippling line;
And hear the reapers' rustic hail
As through the upland's tented sheaves
They wend into their cottage vale
Amid the mist and withered leaves.
In river reaches thick with reeds
The quiet kine are clustered nigh;
The crow on inky pinion speeds
The levels of the fading sky :
And silence spreads on azure wings,
Till naught save lowest laughters there,
Or music trembled whisperings
Breathe through the precious starry air;
But hark! the castle bell they rise,
And as they scale its shadowing height,
Whence bluely broadening shone the sea,
Tinged by eve's planet, spleiidrously,
One sings to the Hesperian skies
A parting ditty in their light.
75
THE PEASANT'S PILGRIMAGE.
ONE rnorn as through the dewy air
The sun rose o'er the eastern flood,
A peasant youth and maiden fair
Within a hill-side cottage stood;
And round them gathered young and old,
Tall sires, and mothers grey and mild,
And pressed their hands in happy fold,
And murmured blessings on each child;
For swiftly comes their marriage day,
And by the custom of the age,
Unto a saintly shrine to-day
They'll pace in pious pilgrimage.
With faith and love each bosom heaves,
And happiness brims every heart,
As clustering by the cottage eaves
They stand to watch the pair depart.
" Good by, good by," the inmates cry,
And cheeks are kissed, and hands are pressed :
The sunbeams fleck his bronzed neck,
And brood upon her gentle breast;
And warm and kind the summer wind
Before them waves the woods divine,
As down the path of purple heath
They wander toward the sainted shrine.
Now onward through the golden morn
Above the summer ocean's flow,
By side-long fields of poppied corn,
And sunny winding roads they go.
The warm wind busy with the leaves
Of tinkling oaks that skirt their way,
Comes breathing of the wheaten sheaves
That tent the uplands o'er the bay;
The smoke of cottage hearths arise,
And through the wooded mountain breaks
They see, amid the opening skies,
The green ravines and purple peaks
That look along the harvest land,
And shadow many a singing guest;
And lapped awhile in noonday dreams
Beside a way-side well they rest,
76
He plucks the flowers that round it spring,
And o'er her brow a chaplet weaves,
The while their happy whispering
Blends with the murmur of the leaves :
Till once again by wooded glen
And hills that greenly watch the brine,
With autumn's sun they wander on
Until they reach the sainted shrine.
"Ah, what!" the peasant cried, "is wealth,
That cannot banish care, asthore,
Sure we've light hearts, and strength and health,
And what can any lord have more;
We've song and work for summer's hour,
And cottage hearths for winter's cold,
And peace is rarer far than power,
And love, my Mary sweet, than gold."
And as amid the woodland halls
They pace from out the noonday flame,
He hears the tinkling waterfalls,
In spraey accents shape her name :
All beauteous things that round him lie
He loves to blend with her, and trace
In glimmering lake, and golden sky,
The tender image of her face;
The sun itself is like her crown;
He thinks the lustrous stream, that there
Through shadows brown, is flowing down,
Is like the ripple of her hair;
And leaves that stray in crispy play,
But fall to make her pathway fine,
As softly o'er the forest floor,
They wander toward the sainted shrine.
Now o'er the distant slopes of heath
The sea-ascending mists are roMsd;
Now sinks the autumn sun beneath
The cooling chasm of pallid gold :
Beside the songless forests crown
A star looks o'er their dusty way;
Above the comfortable town
The homely cloud of evening grey :
And now beyond the wild ravine,
Through branches wet with drizzling rills,
In darkness clear and cold is seen
The sullen lake and leaden hills
77
That guard the ruined isle below,
And o'er its leafy altar brood,
'Mid hermit shadows moving slow
Along the sacred solitude :
And as before the Cross they stand
Through breathless spaces of the night,
The river murmurs glad, the land
Breathes round in desolate delight;
And clear and far each spirit star
That sparkles through the depths divine,
Seems pausing there to hear the prayer
They murmur by the sainted shrine.
Oh, sacred is the watch they keep,
Throughout the live long night alone,
In holy silence calm and deep,
They worship till the stars are gone;
And day flits past in wandering dreams,
O'er lessening lengths of road, till down
The western steeps sweet heaven seems
To smile above their straw-thatch 'd town,
Where welcome rings amid the glow
Of yellow evening clear and still,
And dear old faces smile below,
As they ascend the homeward hill :
Come maidens wreathe the village doors
With greenest leaves, above, beneath;
And deck the walls and strew the floors
With apron full of blossomed heath ;
And twine the bridal crown of corn,
And leave it in the starlit air,
Until the freckled autumn morn
Shall touch it, and the youthful pair,
'Mid joyous eyes, and happy skies,
And singing birds, and breathing kine,
Along the ways of olden days
Shall pace unto the Marriage Shrine.
THE SEA SERPENT.
i.
UPON the level of the midnight sea
Kested the blue dome of immensity,
Spangled with starry clusters innumerate;
Save to the east where lay a line of clouds
Foam pale, but indistinct as unguessed fate;
As statelily the full sailed ship cleft through
The waste of heaving blue.
78
Beneath, the swinging oil lamp's yellow glow,
Over his charts, the captain bent, below;
Calmly secure, whence'er a wind should blow:
The sailors sang at the helm, and in the shrouds.
Three bells had gone, a dark cloud dimmed the moon,
That underneath the wave would vanish soon;
And in the solemn darkness before dawn
All, save the helmsman, slept; when in the wake
A strange and rushing sound turned his cheek wan;
And looking o'er his shoulder, he beheld
A something black that swelled
And lengthened far away, while all around
The monstrous head advancing, bound on bound,
A storm of surge and watery thunder's sound
Bursting the sea calm, caused his heart to quake.
The last light of the moon was glimmering drear,
As on the lonely ocean IT drew near
Sending a mountain ridge of billows before;
And straight behind the heaving stern he saw
The million headed hydra black and frore
With crest enormous o'er the surge, and eyes
Yellow in moonlight rise;
And as it shouldered aside and thundered past,
The seas, foam maddened by the rushing blast
Of its swift motion sloaky masses vast,
Of serpent black, ravenous with mouth and claw.
IV.
Innumerable monsters joined in one
Writhed from its sides and hissed its back upon,
Erect with rage, or sleek with black disdain,
Fierce eyed and multituduous, bursting forth
Horrored for one dread mile the shaken main.
But on the monster's brow risen from sleep
Rested the awe of the deep:
And round it spread a shadow and a breath
Cold as the ice, and imminent as death,
As dawn with moonlight mingled, from beneath
Broadening, beheld it vanish toward the north.
v.
Stiffened with dread and dumb the helmsman stood,
As through that long black valley in the flood
The last huge monster of the early world,
Shook the great seas with unaccustomed fears:
And dumb remained when morning's crimson curled
79
Over the vast; nor spake lie 'till death's hour
Of IT, whose shape of power,
Sleeps underneath the sun and moon, alone
In polar oceans' solitudes unknown,
Mid alps of ice, lulled by the tempest's moan-
Then, but to man appears, once in a thousand years.
SKELETON STORIES.
No. I. THE PHANTOM SHIP.
I'VE sailed sixty years around the earth,
With the stars, sun, and moon,
'Till more familiar far than the faces of my hearth
They have grown to me; and better known the tune
Of the winds and the waves in their calm and stormy mirth
Than the voices I must leave for ever soon ;
And many a yarn I've heard that the blood within me stirred,
But ne'er a one so strange as this I heard from a sea loon,
Which I'll tell you as he told it, word for word.
Ten long voyages made the good ship Lorm
From Dublin to Peru;
Yet never lost she spar or topsail in a storm,
So bounteously the fair winds blew
Through the circles of the climates cold and warm;
Nor did ever shadow sadden her gay crew,
But when passing St Roque's Bay; where, whether night or
day,
Loomed in sunshine or in darkness the dim form
Of a lonely soulless vessel under weigh.
All mouldering seemed this sailorless dim barque,
And rotten to the core;
For, as often sailing near her they could mark
How her weary timbers sighed and creaked sore;
How her hull was overgrown with seaweed dark,
And her withered sails and shrouds the semblance bore
Of a dead man's skin grown grey, and worn with wind and
spray,
As she drifted o'er the waters, black and stark
On her purposeless and solitary way.
To all aboard the vessel Lorm, this sight,
Like a dream of phantasy,
Whether coming in the noon day or the night,
Was worse than any tempest cloud could be;
80
For some grew sick, and some grew mad outright,
'Till her shape was lost betwixt the sky and sea:
And once the Captain said, with hands pressed to his head
" By the Lord, when next she heaves upon our lea
I shall board her though she bear me to the Dead."
It befell one night when they were homeward bound,
Off St Paul's, ten leagues or so,
When the tropic moon was full and the sea calm around,
That a sudden straight before them shone a glow,
And a sudden all anear there rose a sound,
And they saw her swing at anchor to and fro.
Then the Captain furious eyed to the mate beside him cried
" Man the launch ;" and soon the crew were seen to row
Toward the vessel, and to clamber up her side.
When they came upon the quarter, covered thick
With emerald weed and shells,
Where they felt their feet each step to sink and stick
In the sludgy-crusted timber's humid cells,
Where the water gurgled with a dismal glick,
And below, most like the drowning sound of bells;
Lo ! the Captain leading on, tumbled o'er a Skeleton,
Which, as both sprung up together, settled quick
On his shivering arm its white claws strong and wan.
It stood a moment fronting him, with hold
On his arm as iron fast,
Staring on him from its bony sockets cold;
Seeming 'wilclered, as one wakened from the past ;
Then dragged him on where heaps of bones and gold
Lay strewn together round the mizen mast;
And although his bravery had been tried on many a sea,
As it hugged him down the hatch he strove aghast
While across the ocean swept a mighty blast.
Then the crew, who stood like statues, cried aloud
" Let us save him, or he's dead,"
But a paralyzing prickling, like the stinging of a nowd,
Stiffened every limb and checked their forward tread;
And but one there was that, crawling o'er the hatchway,
bowed,
Looked below; when, through a glare of ghastly red,
He saw the Captain stand 'mid a hideous Demon band,
And before him on his hunkers, like a Z,
The Skeleton imploring with each hand.
81
" 'Tis six hundred moons this night," he heard it say,
1 ' Since those bones, without a bier,
Took ship from Dublin city, bound away
To Janeiro, with my only daughter dear;
And prosperous was our voyage, until the day
Yon pirate ghost that, still with ghastly leer
O'er her pallid beauty gloats, boarded us and cut all throats
Saving hers, whose airy cries I still must hear
Ever while this lonely doomed vessel floats.
" Though I lay upon the deck dead and cold,
Yet knew I what was done,
By those pirates in their hellish cabin hold,
All that dread night, and for yet another sun;
How the treasure-chests they rifled of their gold,
How they rioted to madness every one
Then with pistol and red blade, fought together for yon maid;
But what passed in that black hour can ne'er be told
Until, save their leader, all in blood were laid.
" As they fought, meanwhile, their barque in a great wind
Was lost upon the wave;
And this vessel, with its dead ones, floated blind
O'er the pathless waste of ocean like a grave;
Only she and yonder monster left behind.
For two days I heard him curse and heard her rave;
Then silence lived below, and I only heard the flow
Of the seas of the world o'er which the vessel drave,
Back and forward 'twixt the realms of fire and snow.
' ' Oh ! save us from this doomed life of death, good human
soul,
Let us rest in the deep.
Nor drift, a sight accursed, o'er the brine from pole to pole;
But let the ship be sunk that, we who mourn may sleep
In the quiet of the ocean, 'till the judgment thunders toll,
When as all have sown, so surely shall they reap. "
But as round the Captain gazed, with dread his eyes were
glazed
Even to his inmost marrow seemed his very soul to creep,
And without voice or motion for awhile he looked as crazed.
For gazing at the cabin's end^he saw,
Half in water and half out,
A man, who by some fearful ocean law,
Underneath had grown into a fish with snout,
Shark-like, that grasped with one finny paw
The phantom of a woman fair about,
Who writhed in silent pain regarding him, her bane,
While round them mowing moved a hideous rout,
PJood-red, like clouds about a moon, in wane,
F
82
7 ^ ,. 3 holy and strong;
When a lightning bolt, descending through the night,
Burst the bottom of the vessel; and the throng
Of hideous demons vanished from his sight.
All save the phantom wan, who toward the Skeleton
Floated gently with a murmur like a song;
And with a pure smile seemed to rest his neck upon.
Up rushed the gurgling waters from below
With thirsty thundering swoar;
And the Captain quickly reached the deck, I trow,
Where his men believed they ne'er would see him more;
And in time they gained their boat, for to and fro
The sinking vessel swung, and the winds were in a roar;
Then all hands pulled their best o'er the midnight ocean's
breast,
To their own good ship, whose lights began to grow
Faint and far along the surges toward the west.
And as they rowed, ten minutes scarce had sped,
When, on the sinking deck,
Gleamed the Skeleton's tall, ghastly frame and head,
And the Phantom's, with her arms about his neck,
Like a moon shiny cloud behind a tree that's dead;
And as the waves rose round, though dwindling to a speck,
Still seemed to smile afar o'er the black seas like a star;
Nor 'till they reached their vessel in the deeps were buried.
A strange tale, messmates, this, methinks, as e'er was told
by tar.
No. II. OLD TOR QUID'S YAEN.
I.
'TwAS in the spring of Seventeen Eighty-eight,
That our vessel, having got aboard our freight,
Dropt down the Liffey in as fair a wind
As ever bellied sail. To India we
Were bound, and of the Cerise I was mate.
The fifth day Finisterre was left behind:
At Cadiz for a week we shipped with w r ine,
And holding thence our course along the brine
Off bleak Cape Blanco met a gale; but fate
Passed o'er us 'till we reached the Southern Sea;
And then for three weeks more we never sighted shore,
But straight abreast the Atlantic trades went scudding gal-
lantly.
83
ii.
At Ccidiz, as I just forgot to tell,
We took aboard some passengers as well-
All British they; a gentleman of wealth,
Named Astor, with his servants, and also
His doctor and lais daughter, Pauline Fell;
A beauty she, but with a look of stealth
And pride and sorrow in her brow and face.
Upon the quarter oft I'd seen her pace
Of evenings, when the sky was black as hell
With tempest, and when all had gone below,
With sullen tigress' tread in the gloom that grew like lead,
Staring norward through the darkness o'er the lurid billows
flow.
in.
As by the round-house fire we talked at night,
Many a curious matter came to light;
For, of Master Astor speaking, we were told
This rich man loved the doctor's daughter fair,
Who loved an English youth with all her might,
Whom Astor, it was said, had bought with gold
To give her up and stay at home, while he
Bore her to India with him o'er the sea;
But, though he loved her for beauty rare,
We saw both by her manner, angry and cold,
The wrong he'd done her stirred her wrath in glance and word,
And made her look, when near him, like a wild beast in a
lair.
IV.
One eve, when Isle Ascension was in view,
And sea and sky were all one gold and blue,
I stood to the wheel awhile; and as they leant
Together o'er the bulwark, chanced to hear
The Master Astor this fair lady woo.
" You say," said he, " your will shall ne'er be bent ?"
" Never!" she cried. " Then, by the Lord, you fear,"
. He hissed, "since thus you spurn me, mark me well,
I swear it by the Heavens and by Hell,
From which I own a dread, unnamed spell,
If mine you shall not be, alive, upon the sea
My skeleton shall yet embrace your beauty, Pauline Fell"
v.
No more he spoke, but went below. The day,
As in those climes, died sudden; far away
A. black cloud sprang up from the west, and soon
With it a wind; all sail was taken in.
And all made taut, the decks cleared right away.
84
On came the storm, and through the clouds the moon
Plunged like our vessel 'mid the tempest's din.
That midnight, when 'twas blowing a full gale,
And I had gone below, a figure pale
Passed me, but as she passed me smiled gay;
And in the cabin's gloom, then lightless as a tomb,
Was lost. Why 'twas I know not, but my instinct boded sin.
Next morn, before a sudden, mighty blast
The ship turned beam end on; the mizzen-mast
Was cut away, and for a time we tried
To wear the ship, in which a leak then sprung
Showed five feet in the hold. The lead w r as cast
And but ten fathoms found. Just then there sprung
A cry, that Master Astor, too, had died,
Which made each man that heard it stand aghast,
For 'twas from her he wanted for his bride :
We saw her father, while his hands he rung,
Speak with her, but the fear of shipwreck was so near,
And thick the sky, but little heed we spared to aught beside.
An hour scarce past, when came a fearful shock,
As struck our ship upon a bank or rock
Some ten miles eastward of Ascension's coast.
The waves washed over the Cerise, yet still
She held together firm as in a dock.
Though water-logged and wholly helpless, till
Next morning; when, through vapours, like a ghost,
A sloop appeared and presently hove to.
And in her boats our passengers and crew
Were ta'en aboard; all save the man late dead.
Thence, in the Billow's King, we sailed on the wind's wing,
Till o'er the surge of Pondicherry England's flag waved red.
VIII.
There waiting for a barque we stayed awhile,
Nor heard I more of Pauline Fell, whose smile
The hour of As tor's death ne'er left my sight,
But in the Argus from Madras took sail
For England; when one evening to beguile
The time, when talking of that fearful night
She passed me; an old comrade, growing white,
Told me, that on the eve of that same gale
85
He saw her mix a something in the cup
Of wine, that Astor presently drank up ;
33ut this he thought all fair, in' the doctor's daughter there,
Till the guineas three she gave him made him doubt that all
was right.
IX.
Our homeward voyage round the Cape was slow,
From baffling winds, and fogs, and storms of snow;
At length the icebergs dwindling in the sky,
Gave us our rest o' nights again; and on
Across the bounding trade wave's azure flow
We saw our ship, all canvas-crowded, fly
Under the spangling stars and flaming sun.
Nor was it 'till again we voyaged by
Ascension that a storm began to blow,
Or that we spoke a barque our lea upon,
Which passing told us how, under our larboard bow,
A wreck had sunk, whose passengers they'd rescued all save
That night spread dark with tempest o'er the main,
The thunder roared, through deluges of rain,
When, scudding under bare poles with the storm,
We heard the foretop cry "Look out a wreck!"
And forward running I was first to gain
The shrouds, when I beheld I knew her well
The old Cerise's hull, and on its deck
Amid the surge a white boned skeleton,
That clasped in its arms a female form,
Which, by the Heavens, I swear was Pauline Fell!
'Twas but a moment when the lightning shone
They passed then all was black the terrored sight was gone.
THE PURSUIT.
i.
As down the steeps of twilight drop'd the sun seaward,
Over tower and mountain shining yellowly,
In a haze of glory mistily a-leaward
Marked I there one sable barque scud up the burning sky.
II.
Then up my sail flew swiftly, swelling to the mastherd;
O'er the waters night-ward dimly breasted we,
As across a cloud-rack dusk and thunder blasted,
Flies, a demon in his wrath, to meet an enemy.
Oh ! well I knew his aspect black amid the glory,
As we came with darkness on, up stood and snouted he-
He that in my homestead glared so fierce and gory,
O'er my brother's lurid visage stooping on his knee.
The helm in hands of vengeance steadily I guided
O'er the kindling surges, across the windy sea,
As the last black billow like a monster glided
Under, like a ball of battle midships thundered we.
v.
In a cry of curses side to side we swung them
In that sea of fury, whence no soul could flee,
Cleft them down in bloody heaps, and o'er the bulwarks
flung them
Flung the murderous masses down to putrify the sea.
VI.
Upon the bloody quarter, when the fight was ending,
Throat to throat and dirk to dirk two grappled I and
he,
As I jerked him through and through I heard a sound
ascending,
And double darkness round us twain rose upward from
the sea.
VII.
We raised a shout of triumph it dumbed upon the water;
I know not why our triumph cry fell down so drearily
But, leaping all we left the barge, just as the tempest caught
her,
And saw her 'mid the lightened foam drift blindly down
the sea.
VIII.
Oft now in dreams of tempest gleam their faces nigh us;
And often after night's carouse, when deckward clamber we,
All viewthatdemon'd ship pass like a drift of midnight by us,
Or in dark dawns or stormy moonlight hanging on our lea.
THE FIEND FACE.
IN a crimson-curtained chamber, hung with many a floating
light,
And with many a picture glowing,
And with many a mirror bright,
Young Lord Otho, pondering, paces in the still midnight,
87
Up and down the silent vista, from the broad and ashy hearth,
To the lattice, where the beaming
Of the moonlight lies a dreaming;
There he stops, and looks across the shadows on the earth.
Far beyond the bronzed wood, amid the moony haze appear
Lowly lines of purple hills,
And gleams of ocean, steely clear,
Lying on the umbered lowland, like a glimmering spear.
But with deadly eyes he gazes down the dcpthy river space,
Where against the pallid vapour
Lies the castle's turret trace,
On the cliff that glooms the waters with its ebon face.
There within her perfumed chamber Lady Sycroil slumbers
newly;
She, who won his heart, and after
Turned her smiles of love to laughter,
When a richer suitor glittered, whom she married duly.
She, who played upon his spirit with a seeming pure devotion,
Till the heart within his bosom
Toward her turned in w r orship motion ;
She, who was his orb of life, and swayed him as the moon the
ocean.
She, who uttered words of loving, fervently as heavenly
prayers
Turned, and mocked his helpless fury,