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Close, close it is pressed to the window,
As if those childish eyes

Were looking into the darkness,
To see some form arise.

And a woman's waving shadow
Is passing to and fro,
Now rising to the ceiling,

Now bowing and bending low.

What tale do the roaring ocean,
And the night-wind, bleak and wild,
As they beat at the crazy casement,
Tell to that little child?

And why do the roaring ocean,

And the night-wind, wild and bleak,

As they beat at the heart of the mother, Drive the color from her cheek?

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.

SOUTHWARD with fleet of ice

Sailed the corsair Death;

Wild and fast blew the blast,

And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice

Glistened in the sun;

On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist

Dripped with silver rain;

But where he passed there were cast Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello

Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;

Three days or more seaward he bore, Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Alas! the land-wind failed,

And ice-cold grew the night;

And never more, on sea or shore, Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,

The Book was in his hand;

"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,'

He said, "by water as by land!

In the first watch of the night,

Without a signal's sound, Out of the sea, mysteriously,

The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star

Were hanging in the shrouds ;

Every mast, as it passed,

Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!

As of a rock was the shock;

Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark,

They drift in close embrace,

With mist and rain, to the Spanish Main; Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, for ever southward,

They drift through dark and day;

And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream Sinking, vanish all away.

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