An echo return'd on the cold gray morn,

Like the breath of a spirit sighing.

The castle portal stood grimly wide;
None welcomed the king from that weary ride;
For dead, in the light of the dawning day,
The pale sweet form of the welcomer lay,
Who had yearn'd for his voice while dying!

The panting steed, with a drooping crest,

Stood weary.

The king return'd from her chamber of rest,
The thick sobs choking in his breast;

And, that dumb companion eying,

The tears gush'd forth which he strove to check; He bow'd his head on his charger's neck: "O steed-that every nerve didst strain,

Dear steed, our ride hath been in vain

To the halls where my love lay dying!"

CAROLINE NORTON.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

IT was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main:

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?"

"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast !”— And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?"
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea !”

“O father! I see a gleaming light,

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming

snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the

wave,

On the Lake of Galilee.

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
Look 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.

"Now, who be ye would cross Loch Gyle, This dark and stormy water? `

"Oh! I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, And this-Lord Ullin's daughter.

"And fast before her father's men,
Three days we've fled together,
For should he find us in the glen,
My blood would stain the heather.

"His horsemen hard behind us ride;
Should they our steps discover,
Then who will cheer my bonny bride
When they have slain her lover?”

Out spake the hardy Highland wight,

66

'I'll go, my chief—I'm ready :

It is not for your silver bright,

But for your winsome lady: