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Now is the ocean's bosom bare,
Unbroken as the floating air;
The ship hath melted quite away,

Like a struggling dream at break of day.

No image meets my wandering eye,

But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky:

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour dull
Bedims the wave so beautiful;

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown!

XXVIII.-THE CONVICT SHIP.

(HERVEY.)

Thomas Kibble Hervey was born in Manchester in 1804, and died in 1859. He was for some time Editor of the Athenaeum.

MORN on the waters!-and purple and bright
Bursts on the billows the flashing of light;
O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale.
The winds come around her, and murmur, and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along.
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds;
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters, away and away!
Bright, as the visions of youth ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!-
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,
Music around her and sunshine on high,
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,

"Oh! there be hearts that are breaking, below!"

Night on the waves!-and the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky;

Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light:
Look to the waters! asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?

Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!

Who, as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,
A phantom of beauty,-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And souls that are smitten lie bursting within?
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever-
Hearts that are parted, and broken-for ever?
Or dreams that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's
grave?

'Tis thus with our life-while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,
Gaily we glide in the gaze of the world,
With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled:
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes—
But chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs!
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears; And the withering thoughts that the world cannot know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;

Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore, Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o'er.

XXIX. THE RED FISHERMAN.

(PRAED.)

Winthrop Mackworth Praed was the son of a London banker. Born 1802; died 1839. He was for some years a member of the House of Commons; and in early life was an intimate friend and literary coadjutor of the late Lord Macaulay in Knight's Quarterly Magazine. The allegorical meaning of this remarkable poem will be easily understood.

"Oh, flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!"

Romeo and Juliet.

THE Abbot arose, and closed his book,
And donned his sandal shoon,
And wandered forth alone, to look
Upon the summer moon:

A starlight sky was o'er his head,
A quiet breeze around;

And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed,
And the waves a soothing sound.

It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
But love and calm delight;

Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
On his wrinkled brow that night.
He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds;

He clasped his gilded rosary

But he did not tell the beads:

If he looked to the heaven, 'twas not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;

If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.

A pious Priest might the Abbot seem,—

He had swayed the crosier well;

But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream,
The Abbot were loath to tell.

Companionless, for a mile or more

He traced the windings of the shore.

Oh, beauteous is that river still,

As it winds by many a sloping hill,

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And many a dim, o'er-arching grove,
And many a flat and sunny cove,

And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
The honey-suckle sweetly shades;
And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
So gay they are with grass and flowers.
But the Abbot was thinking of scenery,
About as much, in sooth,

As a lover thinks of constancy,

Or an advocate of truth.

He did not mark how the skies in wrath
Grew dark above his head;

He did not mark how the mossy path
Grew damp beneath his tread;
And nearer he came, and still more near,
To a pool, in whose recess

The water had slept for many a year,
Unchanged and motionless.
From the river stream it spread away,
The space of half a rood;
The surface had the hue of clay,

And the scent of human blood.
The trees and the herbs that round it grew
Were venomous and foul;

And the birds that through the bushes flew
Were the vulture and the owl.

The water was as dark and rank

As ever a company pumped;

And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank,

Grew rotten while it jumped.

And bold was he who thither came,

At midnight, man or boy;

For the place was cursed with an evil name,

And that name was "The Devil's Decoy!"

The Abbot was weary as Abbot could be,
And he sate down to rest on the stump of a tree:
When suddenly rose a dismal tone—

Was it a song, or was it a moan?

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"Oh ho! Oh ho!

Above,-below!

Lightly and brightly they glide and go:
The hungry and keen to the top are leaping,—
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping;
Fishing is fine when the pool is muddy,
Broiling is rich when the coals are ruddy!”
In a monstrous fright, by the murky light,
He looked to the left, and he looked to the right.
And what was the vision close before him,
That flung such a sudden stupor o'er him ?
'Twas a sight to make the hair uprise,
And the life-blood colder run:

The startled Priest struck both his thighs,
And the Abbey clock struck one!

All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sate on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod.
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore.
His arms and his legs were long and bare;
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble
Had bent that stout back nearly double.
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets;
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago:
And the hands that worked his foreign vest,
Long ages ago had gone to their rest:

You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood with Ham and Shem!

There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he took forth a bait from his iron box.

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