When the rolling eyes of the light-house there on the fatal neck

Of land running out into rock-they had saved many hundreds from wreck

Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as we past,

Does it matter how many they saved? we are all of us wrecked at last

"Do you fear," and there came through the roar of the breaker a whisper, a breath

"Fear? am I not with you? I am frightened at life, not death."

And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone in the sky,

Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie

Bright as with deathless hope-but, however they sparkled and shone,

The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own

No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth

below,

A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.

O we poor orphans of nothing-alone on that lonely

shore

Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore!

Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly

fruit

Come from the brute, poor souls-no souls-and to die with the brute

But pity-the Pagan held it a vice-was in her and in

me,

Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be!

Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power, And pity for our ownselves on an earth that bore not a flower;

Pity for all that suffers on land or in air or the deep, And pity for our ownselves till we longed for eternal sleep.

"Lightly step over the sands! the waters-you hear them call!

Life with its anguish, and horrors, and errors-away with it all!"

And she laid her hand in my own-she was always loyal and sweet

Till the points of the foam in the dusk came playing about our feet.

There was a strong sea-current would sweep us out to the

main.

"Ah, God," though I felt as I spoke, I was taking the name in vain—

"Ah, God," and we turned to each other, we kissed, we embraced, she and I,

Knowing the Love we were used to believe everlasting would die:

We had read their know-nothing books, and we leaned to the darker side

Ah, God, should we find Him? Perhaps, perhaps, if we died, if we died:

We never had found Him on earth, this earth is a fatherless Hell

"Dear Love, forever and ever, forever and ever farewell,"

Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began!
Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man.

But the blind wave cast me ashore, and you saved me, a valueless life.

Not a grain of gratitude mine? You have parted the man from the wife.

I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea, If a curse meant aught, I would curse you for not having let me be.

Why should I live? one son had forged on his father and fled,

And if I believed in a God, I would thank Him, the other

is dead,

And there was a baby-girl, that had never looked on the

light:

Happiest she of us all, for she past from the night to the

night.

Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment

of pain

If every man die forever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheeled through the silence of space,

Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race,

When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled

From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead?

Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings?

O yes,

For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular

press,

When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,

And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill, and crows to the sun and the moon,

Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turned into blood,

And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;

For their knowing and know-nothing books are scattered from hand to hand

We have knelt in your know-all chapel, too, looking over the sand.

What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well?

Infinite wickedness rather that made everlasting Hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does what he will with his own;

Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us

groan!

Hell? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told,

The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn for his gold,

And so there were Hell forever? but were there a God,

as you say,

His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanished away.

Ah, yet I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe,

Of a God behind all-after all-the great God for aught that I know;

But the God of Love and of Hell together-they cannot be thought,

If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to naught!

Blasphemy! whose is the fault? is it mine? for why would you save

A madman to vex you with wretched words, who is best in his grave?

Hence! she is gone! can I stay? can I breathe divorced from the Past?

You needs must have good lynx-eyes i I do rot escape you at last.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

WASHINGTON HAWKINS DINES WITH

COLONEL SELLERS.

From "Gilded Age."

WASHINGTON was greatly pleased with the Sellers

Mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting-room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other's waists.

"Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home; just consider yourself under your own shingles, my boy-I'll have a fire going in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear; and let's have things cheerful-just as glad to see you, Washing