When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the goodman mends his armour, How well Horatius kept the bridge MACAULAY. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. VITAL spark of heavenly flame! Hark! they whisper,-Angels say, The world recedes: it disappears Heaven opens on my eyes! With sounds seraphic ring! my ears Lend, lend your wings! I mount! fly! POPE. 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 where her eyes, as the fairy-flax, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, The skipper he stood beside the helm, And watched how the veering flaw did blow Then up and spake an old sailor, "Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, Colder and louder blew the wind, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm and smote amain She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, "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, say, what may it be?" ""T is 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, But the father answered never a word:- Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face 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 may be ; And she thought of Christ who stilled the waves On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept And ever the fitful gusts between It was the sound of the trampling surf The breakers were right beneath her bows, And a whooping billow swept the crew She struck where the white and fleecy waves But the cruel rocks, they gored her side, Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach, The salt sea was frozen on her breast, And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, Such was the wreck of Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! LONGFELLOW. |