XXII.

And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive;

For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five: And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and

ten;

I knew them all as babies, and now they're elderly

men.

XXIII.

For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve;

I am oftener sitting at home in my father's farm at

eve:

And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;

I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.

XXIV.

To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad:

But mine is a time of peace, and there is Grace to

be had;

And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;

And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of Peace.

XXV.

And age is a time of peace, so it be free from

pain,

And happy has been my life; but I would not live

it again.

I seem to be tired a little, that's all, and long for

rest;

Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with

the best.

XXVI.

So Willy has gone, my beauty, my eldest-born, my flower;

But how can I weep for Willy, he has but gone for an hour,

Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;

I, too, shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?

XXVII.

And Willy's wife has written, she never was over

wise.

Get me my glasses, Annie: thank God that I keep my eyes.

There is but a trifle left you, when I shall have past

away.

But stay with the old woman now: you cannot have long to stay.

SEA DREAMS.

AN IDYL.

A CITY clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife—an unknown' artist's orphan child—
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old;
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,

Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea;
For which his gains were dock'd, however small :
His gains were small, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little), like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,

And that one unctuous mouth which lured him,

rogue,

To buy wild shares in some Peruvian mine.
Now seaward-bound for health, they gain'd a
coast,

All sand, and cliff, and deep inrunning cave,
At close of day; slept, woke, and went the next,
The Sabbath, pious variers from the church,
To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer,

Not preaching simple Christ to simple men,
Announced the coming doom, and fulminated
Against the scarlet woman and her creed:
For sideways up he swung
his arms,
and shriek'd
"Thus, thus with violence," ev'n as if he held
The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself
Were that great Angel; "Thus with violence
Shall Babylon be cast into the sea;

Then comes the close." The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world;

He at his own: but when the wordy storm

Had ended, forth they moved and paced the sand,
Ran in and out the long sea-foaming caves,
Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed
(The sootflake of so many a summer still
Clung to their fancies) that they saw,
So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff,
Lingering on all the thymy promontories,
Until the sails were darken'd in the west

the sea.

And rosed in the east: then homeward and to

bed:

Where she, that kept a tender Christian hope
Haunting a holy text, and still to that

Returning, as the bird returns, at night,

"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,"

Said, "Love, forgive him :" but he did not speak: Then all in silence for an hour she lay,

Remembering our dear Lord who died for all,

And musing on the little lives of men,

And how they mar that little with their feuds.

But after these were sleeping, a full tide

Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks
Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea-smoke,

And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell
In vast sea-cataracts-ever and anon

Dead claps of thunder from within the cliffs
Heard through the living roar.
At this the child,

Their little Margaret, cradled near them, made
A wail which, howsoever slight, aroused

The mother, and the father suddenly cried,

"A wreck, a wreck!" then turn'd, and groaning said:

"Forgive! How many will say, 'Forgive,' and find A sort of absolution in the sound

To hate a little longer! No; the sin
That neither God nor man can well forgive,
Hypocrisy, I saw it in him at once.

It is not true that second thoughts are best,
But first, and third, which are a riper first,
Too ripe, too late! they come too late for use.
Ah, love, there surely lives in man and beast
Something divine to warn them of their foes:
And such a sense, when first I lighted on him,
Said, trust him not;' but after, when I came
To know him more, I lost it, knew him less;
Fought with what seem'd my own uncharity;
Sat at his table, drank his costly wines,
Made more and more allowance for his talk,
Went further, fool! and trusted him with all,
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years
Of dust and desk work: there is no such mine,
None; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold,
Not making. Ruin'd! ruin'd! the sea roars
Ruin: a fearful night!"

"Not fearful; fair,"
Said the good wife, "if every star in heaven
Can make it fair: you do but hear the tide.
Had you ill dreams?"

"O yes," he said, "I dream'd

Of such a tide swelling toward the land,
And I from out the boundless outer deep
Swept with it to the shore, and enter'd one
Of those dark caves that run beneath the cliffs.
I thought the motion of the boundless deep
Bore through the cave, and I was heaved upon it
In darkness: then I saw one lonely star

6

Larger and larger. What a world,' I thought,
To live in;' but in moving on I found
Only the landward exit of the cave,
Bright with the sun upon the stream beyond:
And near the light a giant woman sat,
All over earthy, like a piece of earth,
A pickaxe in her hand: then out I slipt
Into a land all sun and blossom, trees
As high as heaven, and every bird that sings:
And here the firelight flickering in my eyes
Awoke me."

"That was then your dream," she said; "Not sad, but sweet."

"So sweet, I lay," said he, "And mused upon it, drifting up the stream In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced The broken vision; for I dream'd that still The motion of the great deep bore me on, And that the woman walk'd upon the brink: I wonder❜d at her strength, and ask'd her of it: 'It came,' she said, 'by working in the mines:' Oh, then, to ask her of my shares, I thought;" And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head. And then the motion of the current ceas'd, And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd A mountain, like a wall of burs and thorns; But she, with her strong feet, up the steep hill Trod out a path; I follow'd; and at top She pointed seaward: there a fleet of glass, That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me, Sailing along before a gloomy cloud