Then, steady, helm! Right straight he sailed Towards the headland light: The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed, And black, black fell the night. Then burst a storm to make one quail Though housed from winds and waves―― They who could tell about that gale Must rise from watery graves! Sudden it came, as sudden went; Ere half the night was sped, The winds were hushed, the waves were spent, And the stars shone overhead. Now, as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar! Up rose the cry, “A wreck! a wreck! Pull, mates, and waste no breath!”―― They knew it, though ’t was but a speck Upon the edge of death! Long did they marvel in the town At God His strange decree, That let the stalwart skipper drown And the little child go free! ¹ By special permission of the Author. * * * * * ON LYNN TERRACE.¹ ALL day to watch the blue wave curl and break, All night to hear it plunging on the shore―― In this sea-dream such draughts of life I take, I cannot ask for more. Behind me lie the idle life and vain, The task unfinished, and the weary hours; That long wave softly bears me back to Spain And the Alhambra’s towers! Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass, To list the mule-bells jingling on the height; Below, against the dull esparto grass, The almonds glimmer white. Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and browns, Invite my fancy, and I wander through The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns The world’s first sailors knew. Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise; Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days, Venice salutes my eyes. Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair; I see, far off, the red-tiled hamlets shine, And catch, through slits of windows here and there, Blue glimpses of the Rhine. Again I pass Norwegian fjord and fjeld, And through bleak wastes to where the sunset’s fires Light up the white-walled Russian citadel, The Kremlin’s domes and spires. And now I linger in green English lanes, By garden plots of rose and heliotrope; And now I face the sudden pelting rains On some lone Alpine slope. Now at Tangier, among the packed bazars, I saunter, and the merchants at the doors Smile, and entice me: here are jewels like stars, And curved knives of the Moors; Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates; What would Howadji――silver, gold, or stone? Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates The camels make their moan.