"Our boat was oot ae fearfu' night,

And when the storm blew o'er, My husband, and my three brave sons, Lay corpses on the shore.

"I've been a wife for thirty years,

A childless widow three;

I maun buy them now to sell again,— They're dear fish to me!"

The farmer's wife turn'd to the door,

What was't upon her cheek? What was there rising in her breast, That then she scarce could speak?

She thought upon her ain guid man, Her lightsome laddies three;

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.

heart,

"They're dear fish to me!"

"Come back," she cried, with quivering voice

And pity's gathering tear; "Come in, come in, my poor woman, Ye're kindly welcome here.

"I kentna o' your aching heart,

Your weary lot to dree;

I'll ne'er forget your sad, sad words:
'They're dear fish to me!'"

Ay, let the happy-hearted learn
To pause ere they deny

The meed of honest toil, and think
How much their gold may buy,—

How much of manhood's wasted strength,
What woman's misery,-

What breaking hearts might swell the cry: "They're dear fish to me!"

AUTHOR UNKNOWN.

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.

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; Oh 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; Oh say, what may it be?" "Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"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 gleam

ing snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That saved she might be;

THE STORM.

THE tempest rages wild and high, The waves lift up their voice and cry Fierce answers to the angry sky,Miserere Domine.

wave

On the Lake of Galilee.

To live upon the stormy main;

Miserere Domine,

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.

Vain is it now to strive or dare;
A cry goes up of great despair,—
Miserere Domine.

The stormy voices of the main,
The moaning wind and pelting rain
Beat on the nursery window-pane:—
Miserere Domine.

Warm-curtained was the little bed,
Soft pillowed was the little head,
'The storm will wake the child," they said.
Miserere Domine.

Cowering among his pillows white,

He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright,

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 seaweed,

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.

Miserere Domine.

The morning shone, all clear and gay,
On a ship at anchor in the bay,
And on a little child at play.-

Gloria tibi Domine!
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.

TWILIGHT AT SEA:-A FRAGMENT.
THE twilight hours, like birds flew by,
As lightly and as free;

Ten thousand stars were in the sky,
Ten thousand on the sea;
For every wave, with dimpled face

That leaped upon the air,
Had caught a star in its embrace,
And held it trembling there.
AMELIA B. WELBY.