I could see no more; my heart swelled into my throat, my eyes filled with tears; I felt as if I were acting a barbarous part, in standing by and gazing idly on this scene of maternal anguish. I wandered to another part of the church-yard, where I remained until the funeral train had dispersed.

When I saw the mother slowly and painfully quitting the grave, leaving behind her the remains of all that was dear to her on Earth, and returning to silence and destitution, my heart ached for her. What, thought I, are the distresses of the rich! they have friends to soothe, pleasures to beguile, a world to divert and dissipate their griefs. What are the sorrows of the young! Their growing minds soon close above the wound; their elastic spirits soon rise beneath the pressure; their green and ductile affections soon twine round new objects. But the sorrows of the poor, who have no outward appliances to soothe; the sorrows of the aged, with whom life at best is but a wintry day, and who can look for no after-growth of joy; the sorrows of a widow, aged, solitary, destitute, mourning over an only son, the last solace of her years; these are indeed sorrows which make us feel the impotency of consolation.

RIVERMOUTH ROCKS.

JOHN G. WHittier.

RIVERMOUTH Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,

When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold green moss :
For there the river comes winding down
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,

And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!"

And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
"Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnish'd steel.

Once in the old Colonial days,

Two hundred years ago and more,

A boat sail'd down through the winding ways Of Hampton River to that low shore,

Full of a goodly company

Sailing out on the summer sea,

Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.

In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!

A young man sigh'd, who saw them pass.
Loud laugh'd his fellows to see him stand
Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
Watching a white hand beckoning long.

"Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl, As they rounded the point where Goody Cole Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,

A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. "Oho!" she mutter'd, "ye're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say,

6

The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it's one to go, but another to come!'"

"She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair:

I'm scary always to see her shake

Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,

And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."

But merrily still, with laugh and shout,

From Hampton River the boat sail'd out,

Till the huts and the flakes on the Star seem'd nigh,
And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.

They dropp'd their lines in the lazy tide,
Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
They saw not the shadow that walk'd beside,
They heard not the feet with silence shod:
But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
Shot by the lightnings through and through ;
And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
Ran along the sky from west to east.

Then the skipper look'd from the darkening sea
Up to the dimm'd and wading Sun;

But he spake like a brave man cheerily,

"Yet there is time for our homeward run." Veering and tacking, they backward wore; And, just as a breath from the woods ashore Blew out to whisper of danger past,

The wrath of the storm came down at last!

The skipper haul'd at the heavy sail :
"God be our help," he only cried,

As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
Smote the boat on its starboard side.
The shoalsmen look'd, but saw alone
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,
The strife and torment of sea and air.

Goody Cole look'd out from her door:

The Isles of Shoals were drown'd and gone,

Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
Toss the foam from tusks of stone.

She clasp'd her hands with a grip of pain,
The tear on her cheek was not of rain :
"They are lost," she mutter'd, "boat and crew!
Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"

Suddenly seaward swept the squall;

The low Sun smote through cloudy rack;
The shoals stood clear in the light, and all
The trend of the coast lay hard and black :
But, far and wide as eye could reach,
No life was seen upon wave or beach;
The boat that went out at morning never
Sail'd back again into Hampton River.
O mower, lean on thy bended snath,

Look from the meadows green and low :
The wind of the sea is a waft of death,

The waves are singing a song of woe!
By silent river, by moaning sea,
Long and vain shall thy watching be :
Never again shall the sweet voice call,
Never the white hand rise and fall!

O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight

Ye saw in the light of breaking day!
Dead faces looking up cold and white

From sand and sea-weed where they lay.
The mad old witch-wife wail'd and wept,
And cursed the tide as it backward crept:
"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake!
Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"

Solemn it was in that old day

In Hampton town and its log-built church, Where side by side the coffins lay

And the mourners stood in aisle and porch:

In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
The voices falter'd that raised the hymn,
And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
Sobb'd through his prayer and wept in turn.

And the Sun set paled, and warm'd once more
With a softer, tenderer after-glow;

In the east was moonrise with boats off-shore And sails in the distance drifting slow: The beacon glimmer'd from Portsmouth bar, The White Isle kindled its great red star; And life and death in my old-time lay Mingled in peace like the night and day!

Around me, save God's and my own; And the hush of my heart is as holy 'As hours when angels have flown!

Long ago, was I weary of voices

Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago, I was weary of noises

That fretted my soul with their din ;
Long ago, was I weary of places

Where I met but the human,

and sin.

I walk'd through the world with the worldly,
I craved what the world never gave,
And I said, " In the world each ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,

Is toss'd on the shore of the real,

And sleeps like a dream in a grave.”