among the crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and agitated, when I heard a faint voice call her name. It was from a poor sailor, who had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on deck, in the shade; but of late his illness had so increased that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he died.

11. He had been helped on deck as we came up the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a countenance so wasted, so pale, and so ghastly, that it is no wonder even the eye of affection did not recognize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye darted on his features, it read at once a whole volume of sorrow; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in silent agony.

12. All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances the greetings of friends-the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers-but felt that I was a stranger in the land.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

IV.

138. THE TRAVELER.

W ITHDRAW yon curtain, look within that room,

Where all is splendor, yet where all is gloom:

Why weeps that mother? why, in pensive mood,
Group noiseless round, that little, lovely brood?
The battle-door is still, laid by each book,
And the harp slumbers in its customed nook.
2. Who hath done this? what cold, unpitying foe
Hath made this house the dwelling-place of woe!
'Tis he, the husband, father, lost in care,
O'er that sweet fellow in his cradle there :
The gallant bark that rides by yonder strand
Bears him to-morrow from his native land.

3. Why turns he, half unwilling, from his home,
To tempt the ocean, and the earth to roam?

Wealth he can boast a miser's sigh would hush,
And health is laughing in that ruddy blush;
Friends spring to greet him, and he has no foe-
So honored and so blessed,. what bids him go?—

4. His eye must see, his foot each spot must tread,
Where sleeps the dust of earth's recorded dead;
Where rise the monuments of ancient time,
Pillar and pyramid in age sublime;

The Pagan's temple and the Churchman's tower,
War's bloodiest plain and Wisdom's greenèst bower;
All that his wonder woke in school-boy themes,
All that his fancy fired in youthful dreams.

5. Where Socrates once taught he thirsts to stray,
Where Homer' poured his everlasting lay ;
From Virgil's tomb he longs to pluck one flower;
By A'von's' stream to live one moonlight hour;
To pause where England "garners up" her great,
And drop a patriot's tear to Milton's fate;
Fame's living masters, too, he must behold,
Whose deeds shall blazon with the best of old;
Nations compare, their laws and customs scan,
And read, wherever spread, the book of Man :
For these he goes, self-banished from his hearth,
And wrings the hearts of all he loves on earth.
6. Yet say, shall not new joy those hearts inspire,
When, grouping round the future winter fire,
To hear the wonders of the world they burn,
And lose his absence in his glad return?—
Return?-alas! he shall return no more,

To bless his own sweet home, his own proud shōre.

1 Hō'mer, the most distinguished of poets, called the "Father of Song." He is supposed to have been an Asiatic Greek, though his birthplace, and the period in which he lived, are not known.

2 Virgil, (vår jil), the most distinguished of the Roman poets, was born at Andes, a small village of

Mantua, on the 15th of October, B. C. 70. He died on the 22d of Septem. ber, B. C. 19, before completing his fifty-first year. His body lies buried at the distance of two miles from the city of Naples.

Avon, (a' von), a river in England, on the bank of which Shaks peare was born.

7. Look once again-cold in his cabin now,
Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow;
No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep,
To smile on him, then turn away to weep;
Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied,
And shared the wanderer's blessing when he died.

8. Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear;

Even there the spirit that I sing is true,
The crew look on with sad, but curious view
The setting sun flings round his farewell rays,
O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays;
How eloquent, how awful, in its power,
The silent lecture of death's sabbath hour!

9. One voice that silence breaks-the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The plashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle ō'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.
CHARLES SPRAGUE.

V.

139. THE BELL OF THE ATLANTIC.1

1.

NOLL, tōll, töll, thou bell by billows swung ;

TOLL

And, night and day, thy warning words repeat with mourn-
ful tongue!

Foll for the queenly boat, wrecked on yon rocky shōre!
Sea-weed is in her palace halls; she rides the surge' no more.

1 The steamboat Atlantic, plying between Norwich, in Connecticut, and New York, was wrecked on an island near New London. Many of the passengers were on their way to join in the celebration of the annual

Thanksgiving in New England. The bell of this boat, supported by a portion of the wreck, continued for many days and nights to toll as if in mournful requiem of the lost. Surge, (sérj).

2.

Tōll for the master bold, the high-souled and the brave,
Who ruled her like a thing of life amid the crested wave!
Toll for the hardy crew, sons of the storm and blast,

Who long the tyrant ocean dared; but it vanquished them at last.

3.

Tōll for the man of God, whose hallowed voice of prayer
Rose calm above the stifled groan of that intense despair!
How precious were those tones on that sad verge of life,
Amid the fierce and freezing storm, and the mountain billōws'
strife!

4.

Töll for the lover lost to the summoned bridal train!

Bright glows a picture on his breast, beneath th' unfathomed main.
One from her casemènt gazèth lõng o'er the misty sea:
He comèth not, pale maiden—his heart is cold to thee.

5.

Tōll for the absent sire, who to his home drew near,

To bless a glad expecting group-fond wife and children dear!
They heap the blazing hearth; the festal board is spread;
But a fearful guest is at the gate room for the pallid dead!

6.

Töll for the loved and fair, the whelmed beneath the tide-
The broken harps around whose strings the dull sea-monsters

glide!

Mother and nursling sweet, reft from their household throng; There's bitter weeping in the nest where breathed their soul of

song.

7

Töll for the hearts that bleed 'neath misery's furrowing trace!
Toll for the haplèss orphan left, the last of all his race!
Yea, with thy heaviest knell, from surge to rocky shōre,

Toll for the living,—not the dead, whose mortal woes are ō'er!

8.

Töll, tōll, tōll, o'er breeze and billow free,

And with thy startling lōre instruct each rover of the sea :
Tell how o'er proudèst joys may swift destruction sweep,
And bid him build his hopes on high-lōne teacher of the deep.

LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

IT

VI.

140. THE WRECK OF THE ARCTIC.

T was autumn. Hundreds had wended their way from pilgrimages; from Rome and its treasures of dead art, and its glory of living nature; from the sides of the Switzer's mountains, from the capitals of various nations; all of them saying in their hearts, we will wait for the September gales to have done with their equinoctial' fury, and then we will embark; we will slide across the appeased ocean, and in the gorgeous month of October, we will greet our longed-for native land, and our heartloved homes.

2

2. And so the throng streamed along from Berlin, from Paris, from the Orient, converging upon London, still hastening toward the welcome ship, and narrowing every day the circle of engagements and preparations. They crowded aboard. Never had the Arctic bōrne such a host of passengers, nor passengers so nearly related to so many of us.

3. The hour was come. The signal ball fell at Greenwich.' It was noon also at Liverpool. The anchors were weighed ; the great hull swayed to the current; the national colors streamed abroad, as if themselves instinct with life and national sympathy. The bell strikes; the wheels revolve; the signal-gun beats its echoes in upon every structure along the shōre, and the Arctic glides joyfully forth from the Mersey, and turns her prow to the winding channel, and begins her homeward run.

4. The pilot stood at the wheel, and men saw him. Death sat upon the prow, and no eye beheld him. Whoever stood at the wheel in all the voyage, Death was the pilot that steered the craft, and none knew it. He neither revealed his presence nor whispered his errand. And so hope was effulgent,' and lithe' gayety disported itself, and joy was with every guest.

5. Amid all the inconveniences of the voyage, there was still that which hushed evèry murmur-hōme is not far away. And

1E`qui noc' tial, pertaining to the equinoxes, or the time when the day and night are of equal length. This occurs on the 21st of March and the 23d of September.

O'ri ent, place of the rising sun;

the East; hence, the countries of Asia; the early seat of learning. Greenwich, (grîn ́Îj).

4 Ef ful' gent, shining with a flood of light; bright.

Lithe, pliant; easily bent.