But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear Ah, love! let us be true : To one another for the world, which seems So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy nor love nor light, Nor certitude nor peace, nor help for pain; Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, I Matthew Arnold. CHILD AND SHELL. HAVE seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely, and his countenance soon Brightened with joy for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, 115 Wordsworth. T SHELL AND HEART. AKE the bright shell From its home on the lea, And wherever it goes It will sing of the sea; So take the fond heart From its home and its hearth, It will sing of the loved To the ends of the earth. Anon. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. HIS is the ship of pearl which, poets feign, The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl, Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed. Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea! Cast from her lap forlorn, From thy dead lips a clearer note is born While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! O. W. Holmes. With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design! What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. The tiny cell is forlorn, Of cataract seas that snap The three decker's oaken spine Tennyson. Q A FISHING-TOWN. UAINT clusters of gray houses crowding down Unto a river's edge; the river wide, And flecked with fishing-boats beyond the town, Incoming with the slow incoming tide. Moored to the old pier-end, a smack or two Slow dandled by the shoreward-setting swell, And with their nets with every dip wet through, Show their black, pitchy ribs. Some far ship's bell Comes in the capful of light wind that hails From seaward; while still louder and more loud, Beneath the lowering hood of ashen cloud, Rings the hoarse fisher's shout. There nearing sails Loom large and shadowy; and the sunset gun Tells that another day is o'er and done. Anon. SUMMER-CHEMISTRY. WHAT HAT does it take A day to make,— A day at the Bear Camp Ossipee? White clouds a-sail in the shining blue, Of the great green hill, till it lies as dim As the hills in a childhood memory; |