horrible details, one of the vessels being named the "Hesperus," and he somewhere saw a reference to "Norman's Woe." This name so impressed him that he determined to write a ballad on the wrecks. Late one night, as he sat by the fireside smoking his pipe, he conjured up the vivid scene and wrote the ballad. He retired to bed, but, as he relates, it was not to sleep; new thoughts crowded his mind, and he rose and added them to the ballad, and at three o'clock in the morning had finished his immortal poem. There was no such wreck at the place, but his genius has associated it with the iron-bound coast of Cape Ann, and Norman's Woe is a monument consecrated to one of America's greatest poets. "It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear him company. "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. "She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks they gored her sides 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!" THE LAND'S END.