And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reefs 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.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked 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 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!

D

Longfellow.

BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.

I never see a young hand hold
The starry bunch of white and gold,
But something warm and fresh will start
About the region of my heart.
My smile expires into a sigh;
I feel a struggling in the eye,
"Twixt humid drop and sparkling ray,
Till rolling tears have won their way;
For soul and brain will travel back
Through Memory's chequered mazes,
To days when I but trod Life's track
For Buttercups and Daisies.'

Tell me, ye men of wisdom rare,
Of sober speech and silver hair;
Who carry counsel, wise and sage,
With all the gravity of age:
Oh, say, do ye not like to hear
The accents ringing in your ear,

52

BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.

When sportive urchins laugh and shout,
Tossing those precious flowers about,
Springing with bold and gleesome bound,
Proclaiming joy that crazes;
And chorusing the magic sound
Of 'Buttercups and Daisies?'

Are there, I ask, beneath the sky
Blossoms that knit so strong a tie
With childhood's love? Can any please
Or light the infant eye like these?
No, no; there's not a bud on earth,
Of richest tint, or warmest birth,
Can ever fling such zeal and zest
Into the tiny hand and breast.
Who does not recollect the hours

When burning words and praises
Were lavished on those shining flowers,
Buttercups and Daisies?'

There seems a bright and fairy spell
About their very names to dwell;

And though old Time has marked my brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if ye will, but some heart-strings
Are closest linked to simplest things;
And these wild-flowers will hold mine fast,
Till love, and life, and all be past:
And then the only wish I have

Is, that the one who raises

The turf-sod o'er me plant my grave

With Buttercups and Daisies.'

Eliza Cook.

THE GOLDEN MEAN.

Receive, dear friend, the truths I teach,
So shalt thou live beyond the reach
Of adverse Fortune's power:

Not always tempt the distant deep,
Nor always timorously creep

Along the treacherous shore.

He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between

The little and the great,

Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door,
Imbittering all his state.

The tallest pines feel most the power
Of wintry blast; the loftiest tower

Comes heaviest to the ground;
The bolts that spare the mountain's side,
His cloud-capt eminence divide,

And spread the ruin round.

The well-informed philosopher
Rejoices with a wholesome fear,

And hopes in spite of pain ;

If winter bellow from the north,
Soon the sweet spring comes dancing forth,
And Nature laughs again.

What if thy heaven be overcast ?
The dark appearance will not last;
Expect a brighter sky:

The god that strings the silver bow 1
Awakes sometimes the muses too,
And lays his arrows by.

If hindrances obstruct thy way,

Thy magnanimity display,

And let thy strength be seen;