THE DERELICT.

"And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea."

SHIPPING NEWS.

I was the staunchest of our fleet
Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
Into his pits he stamped my crew,
Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

Man made me, and my will

Is to my maker still,

Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer

Lifting forlorn to spy

Trailed smoke along the sky,

Falling afraid lest any keel come near!

Wrenched as the lips of thirst,

Wried, dried, and split and burst,

Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining;

And jarred at every roll

The gear that was my soul

Answers the anguish of my beams' complaining.

For life that crammed me full,

Gangs of the prying gull

That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches!

For roar that dumbed the gale,

My hawse-pipes guttering wail,

Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches!

Blind in the hot blue ring

Through all my points I swingSwing and return to shift the sun anew.

Blind in my well-known sky

I hear the stars go by,

Mocking the prow that can not hold one true!

White on my wasted path

Wave after wave in wrath

Frets 'gainst his fellow, warring where to send me.

Flung forward, heaved aside,

Witless and dazed I bide

The mercy of the comber that shall end me.

North where the bergs careen,

The spray of seas unseen

Smokes round my head and freezes in the falling;

South where the corals breed,

The footless, floating weed

Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling.

I that was clean to run

My race against the sun

Strength on the deep, am bawd to all disaster—
Whipped forth by night to meet

My sister's careless feet,

And with a kiss betray her to my master!

Man made me, and my will

Is to my maker still—

To him and his, our peoples at their pier:

Lifting in hope to spy

Trailed smoke along the sky,

Falling afraid lest any keel come near!

THE ANSWER.

A ROSE, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush

Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.

And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one.
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well-
What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?"
And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour

A voice said, 'Father, wherefore falls the flower?
For lo, the very gossamers are still.'

And a voice answered, 'Son, by Allah's will!" "

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward, Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord: "Sister, before We smote the dark in twain,

Ere yet the stars saw one another plain,

The Seven Seas.

Ta na shouts fal, and such an one should ask."

Vinerer the withere. Iwe al content.

Der as the d whos days an innocent;

Valet Wh sewn the flower fel

Laugh now a viac me saved his soul from Hell.