“O father! I see a gleaming light ;

Oh, 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

Looked 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!

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS,

ETC.

EARLIER POEMS.

THESE Poems were written for the most part during my college-life, and

Some have found their way
Others lead a vagabond and

all of them before the age of nineteen. into schools, and seem to be successful. precarious existence in the corners of newspapers; or have changed their names, and run away to seek their fortunes beyond the sea. I say with the Bishop of Avranches, on a similar occasion, "I cannot be displeased to see these children of mine, which I have neglected, and almost exposed, brought from their wanderings in lanes and alleys, and safely lodged, in order to go forth into the world together in a more decorous garb."

EARLIER POEMS.

AN APRIL DAY.

WHEN the warm sun, that brings

Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
"Tis sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,

When forest-glades are teeming with bright forms, Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell

The coming-on of storms.

From the earth's loosened mould

The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold,
The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song

Comes from the pleasant woods, and coloured wings Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along The forest-openings.