The cottage homes of England! They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks, Through glowing orchards forth they peep, The free, fair homes of England! MARY HOWITT. —01 The Little Mariner. Y, sitting on your happy hearths, beside your mother's knee, How should you know the miseries and dangers of the sea? My father was a mariner, and from my earliest years I can remember, night and day, my mother's prayers and tears. I can remember how she sighed when blew the stormy gale; And how for days she stood to watch the longexpected sail : Hers was a silent, patient grief; but fears and long delay, And wakeful nights and anxious days, were wearing her away. And when the gusty winds were loud, and autumn leaves were red, I watched, with heavy heart, beside my mother's dying bed: Just when her voice was feeblest, the neighbours came to say, The ship was hailed an hour before, and then was in the bay. Alas! too late the ship returned-too late her life to save; My father closed her dying eyes, and laid her in the grave. He was a man of ardent hopes, who never knew dismay; And, spite of grief, the winter-time wore cheerfully away. He had crossed the equinoctial line full seven times or more ; And, sailing northward, had been wrecked on icy Labrador. He knew the Spice Isles, every one, where the clove and nutmeg grow, And the aloe towers, a stately tree, with clustering bells of snow. He had gone the length of Hindustan, down Ganges' holy flood; Through Persia, where the peacock broods, a wild bird of the wood; And, in the forests of the West, had seen the red deer chased, And dwelt beneath the piny woods, a hunter of the waste. Oh! pleasant were the tales he told of lands so strange and new; And in my ignorance I vowed I'd be a sailor too; My father heard my vow with joy; so in the early May We went on board a merchantman, bound for Honduras Bay.* Right merrily, right merrily, we sailed before the wind, With a briskly heaving sea before, and the landsman's cheer behind. There was joy for me in every league, delight on every strand, And I sat for days on the high foretop, on the long look-out for land. *HONDURAS BAY.-On the eastern coast of Central America. There was joy for me in the nightly watch, on the burning tropic seas, To mark the waves, like living fires, leap up to the freshening breeze. Right merrily, right merrily, our gallant ship went free, Until we neared the rocky shoals within the Western Sea. Yet still none thought of danger near, till in the silent night The helmsman gave the dreadful word of "Breakers to the right!" The moment that his voice was heard, was felt the awful shock; The ship sprang forward with a bound, and struck upon a rock. "All hands aloft!" our captain cried: in terror and dismay They threw the cargo over board, and cut the masts away: 'Twas all in vain, 'twas all in vain; rushed o'er the deck, the sea And, shattered with the beating surf, down went the parting wreck. The moment that the wreck went down my father seized me fast, And leaping 'mid the thundering waves, seized on the broken mast. I know not how he bore me up, my senses seemed to swim, A shuddering horror chilled my brain, and stiffened every limb. What next I knew, was how at morn, on a bleak, barren shore, Out of a hundred mariners, were living only four. I looked around, like one who wakes from dreams of fierce alarm, And round my body still I felt, firm locked, my father's arm. And with a rigid, dying grasp, he closely held me fast, Even as he held me when he seized, at midnight, on the mast. With humble hearts and streaming eyes, down knelt the little band, Praying Him who had preserved their lives to lend His guiding hand. And day by day, though burning thirst and pining hunger came, His mercy, through our misery, preserved each drooping frame : And after months of weary woe, sickness, and travel sore, He sent the blessed English ship that took us from that shore. |