One lonely ray that glanced upon a Bed, As if with awful aim direct and certain To show the BLOODY HAND in burning red Embroider'd on the curtain. And yet no gory stain was on the quilt-- The pillow in its place had slowly rotted; The floor alone retain'd the trace of guilt, Those boards obscurely spotted. Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence With mazy doubles to the grated casement-- Oh what a tale they told of fear intense, Of horror and amazement! What human creature in the dead of night Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance? Had sought the door, the window in his flight, Striving for dear existence? What shrieking Spirit in that bloody room Its mortal frame had violently quitted?-- Across the sunbeam, with a sudden gloom, A ghostly Shadow flitted. Across the sunbeam, and along the wall, But painted on the air so very dimly, It hardly veil'd the tapestry at all, Or portrait frowning grimly. O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear, A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is Haunted! THE MARY. A SEA-SIDE SKETCH. Lov'st thou not, Alice, with the early tide To see the hardy Fisher hoist his mast, And stretch his sail towards the ocean wide,-- Like God's own beadsman going forth to cast His net into the deep, which doth provide Enormous bounties, hidden in its vast Bosom like Charity's, for all who seek And take its gracious boon thankful and meek? The sea is bright with morning,--but the dark Seems still to linger on his broad black sail, For it is early hoisted, like a mark For the low sun to shoot at with his pale And level beams: All round the shadowy bark The green wave glimmers, and the gentle gale Swells in her canvas, till the waters show The keel's new speed, and whiten at the bow. Then look abaft--(for thou canst understand That phrase)--and there he sitteth at the stern, Grasping the tiller in his broad brown hand, The hardy Fisherman. Thou may'st discern Ten fathoms off the wrinkles in the tann'd And honest countenance that he will turn To look upon us, with a quiet gaze-- As we are passing on our several ways. So, some ten days ago, on such a morn, The Mary, like a seamew, sought her spoil Amongst the finny race: 'twas when the corn Woo'd the sharp sickle, and the golden toil Summon'd all rustic hands to fill the horn Of Ceres to the brim, that brave turmoil Was at the prime, and Woodgate went to reap His harvest too, upon the broad blue deep. His mast was up, his anchor heaved aboard, His mainsail stretching in the first gray gleams Of morning, for the wind. Ben's eye was stored With fishes--fishes swam in all his dreams, And all the goodly east seem'd but a hoard Of silvery fishes, that in shoals and streams Groped into the deep dusk that fill'd the sky, For him to catch in meshes of his eye.