Nor had the rough storm ceased.

The clouds were parted, and the wind seemed spent ;
But groaning Ocean, like a wounded beast,
With foaming mane and gaping jaws, lay rent,
Curving a dark green back against the proud
Lance of the gold-clad champion in the east,
And, leaping up to clutch him from his skies,
Moaned to its depths aloud,

With a grand horror in its rolling eyes!

And a great awe, like dying hands that fall
O'er kneeling forms, fell sudden over all.
The Soul, communing with the end it neared,
And shuddering fleshward from the death it feared,
Trembling in clay like odour in a flower,

Took in the terrible beauty of that hour.

And speechless men

Turned pale and reverent faces eastward then;

And mothers, by their awe-struck hearts bereaven Of living hope, looked on their little ones,

Their daughters and their sons,

And wondered if they would be theirs in heaven.
The man and woman, trembling in the golden
Dawn, thought of wedded life completer far
Than any wedded lives with mortals are,
And so again their lives, more close enfolden
By that calm thought, became a single scroll,
Sealed with one marriage Soul.

The ship was lifted upward on the rim
Of a huge wave, when one, a seaman he,

Cried out aloud, "Land, comrades, land! Oh, see!"
And far away upon the horizon dim,

Before we sank again, we sighted land—

A cloud no bigger than the prophet's hand.

Then sense and soul did swim,

And mothers smiled again, and strong men wept.
And over all a sudden murmur crept

Crusht out of praying bosoms as a hymn.

Another cried, "A cloud in heaven, no more!"
As down along the deep sea-rut they leapt

Into the bright wide chasms with a roar.

Then the great waters surged them up again,

And, sick with fear, they watched the seamen's eyes Stretched keenly o'er the melancholy main,

And heard their eager cries.

""Tis land," the Master cried, and swiftly flew
His words from lip to lip,

And "Land!" was shouted o'er the tossing ship
Driving toward the cloud that huger grew.

But as the Master spoke

There broke

From under

The jarring strife of thunder

The women shrieked, the men rushed up in wonder: "She sinks !"-and roaring, seething,

With loud and angry breathing,

With tremulous panting, groaning,

And fitful moaning,

The frail ship, shivering on a reef that stunned her, Rent asunder!

Then in a shrieking crowd the great mass stirred,
Women and men with babes that cried and clung,
Toward the boats that swung

At the ship's side, and, over all things heard,
The warning accents of the Master rung.

The man and woman moved not, pale and shrinking;
One turbulent mass of men and women pressed
Like waves into the braver boat, till, sinking,

It loosened, plunging underneath the crest
Of the green waters that did circle and seethe
And crush it underneath,

And lifted up its burden on the waves,

Plunging the men and women to their graves.

Some, stunned to see their groaning comrades drown, Leapt from the dizzy bulwarks, plunging down; While others for the smaller pinnace made,

And, pouring in a blackened flood into it,

Crushed in an instant's time and overthrew it,

Then, stunned and blinded, sank, with shrieks for aid.

So, hopeless of all else, the living few,

With the calm Master and his silent crew,

Bound their frail bodies to the loosening spars;

And straining nerve and thew,

The married man and married woman flew

Unto the breaking hull, and, eager-eyed,
They lashed each other's bodies side by side
With soaken cords thereto.

There came a listening silence, as it were,
Like the mute terror of a victim's heart

When the priest's knife is bare.

A hush was on the waves and on the air,
And with a gurgling sigh that rent apart

The swollen planks, the vessel struck the foam,
And, eddying with a whistling whirlpool, broke
To little fragments of its native oak,

And huger fragments black with harbour loam.
And all around the dying wretches lay,
Choked with the waters, blinded with the spray :
Here little children, torn from tender nests
Where mother's milk was white with dewy rests,
And naked mothers bleeding bloody breath,
And clasping, in the agony of death,
Dead babies to their breasts.

Meantime the man and woman, firmly lashed
To a dark fragment of the hull, were dashed
Through dark sea-ruts, and suddenly were lifted
Upon the waters as they boiled and splashed
High o'er the reef that grimly shone between ;
And, passing slowly o'er, were slowly drifted
Through foam-roof'd passages of emerald green.
Alone they floated on in a half-dream,
With flying waters wet,

They knew not whither; and the great waves met
Hugely above them in a shadowy gleam

Of green and shadowy purple splasht with light,
With intervals of night.

The imminent chasms boiled, and death seemed nigh,

When hugely in the distance there arose

Dark lines of ragged rocks, with foamy snows

Of the torn ocean, and the gulls did fly
Around about with screaming shriek and cry.

The woman said: "The waves whereon we hie
Toward the rugged rocks that yonder lie
Will crush us on them soon, and we shall die!"
Whereat he answered, "Let us die in love→→
Not disunited, Dear, but breast to breast,

As close as these black waves will let us rest

To one another; and the heaven above

Shall take our wedded souls and make them blest!"
The woman twined about him limb in limb,
With eyes that utter gladness rendered dim,
And murmured-"Death is better! Death is best!
VOL. III.

I

And hand in hand, as suppliants, let us go
To God and crave His final mercy, lest
Our souls have sinned against the high behest
Which made us happy lovers long ago."

And panting closelier, heart to heart, too weak
To utter all the peace their hearts would speak,
They floated onward in a blissful vision

Of that sweet time Elysian

When joy was with them, and their doubts and fears

Were white as virgin tears

Till, with the quiet bliss within the brain,

And with the bodily pain,

They fell into a sleep of peaceful breath,

As little ones, whom gladness overpowers,
Are fascinated on a bed of flowers

By the wise serpent Death!

In a half-dream they lay;

And strange weird visions for their half-closed eyes
Were woven in the many-coloured spray

And in the fitful skies;

And closelier, closelier, they clung in calm—
Souls mingled like the singer and the psalm—

And murmured such sweet names as lovers prize.

Was it the sun that, passing from behind
A cloud, then forth in rich apparel came,

And with a wand of flame

Wove a swift spell that hushed the gusty wind,
And smiled upon their sleep?

The waves received the sunshine, and the deep
Lifted the man and woman in its hands,
Bearing them o'er the rugged rocks asleep,
And laid them. smiling on the further sands.
Breathless ney wakened in a foamy shower,
And clomb together to the safer strands,
United by a heavenly voice of power—
The Mercy of that hour.

WILLIAMS BUCHANAN.

Sermons in Stones."

A FEW years ago I was travelling in the south of England. My journey was a business one; and I had almost completed it, when I was unexpectedly detained by some alteration in my arrangements, and so lost my train. The place where this occurred is a very small town, or perhaps more correctly a large village, that but for the railway which has been cut through it would be very much like many other villages-picturesque possibly, and certainly of very little interest to any but those living in it. As it is, however, a tolerably large hotel has sprung up by the railwaystation; and the bustle of railway life has given to one end of it an air of business, contrasting somewhat curiously with the appearance of the rest of the village, where the long low cottages, each with something like a garden-farm, crowned with a small hayrick, attached, look as if nothing about them had been changed for at least fifty years. Even the dress of the women has a quaint old-fashioned look in this part; the short clinging skirts and thick white caps having a curious effect when seen at the distance of only a quarter of a mile from the small bonnets and full-flounced dresses of the smart maid-servants of the hotel, who set the fashions of the immediate neighbourhood.

There is a pretty church at the old end of the village, its square, redbrick tower almost covered with one of those creeping-plants that are green in spring and early summer, but change slowly into golden brown and burning crimson as autumn comes on. I had once spent three hours in this village, and thought I had seen every thing in it that could interest a stranger; and so was not a little annoyed when I discovered that the next train for London did not leave till six o'clock in the evening, there being but two in the course of the day. I made this discovery at about eleven in the forenoon, and was very much concerned to know how I should pass the intervening hours.

An officious waiter at the hotel, who had forced the full knowledge of this annoying detention upon me by asking what I "would please to order for dinner, and at what time, sir?" and who seemed instinctively to understand my embarrassment, ran off glibly, as though it had been the bill of fare for dinner, a list of all that was entertaining and interesting in the neighbourhood; beginning with "Fine echo, sir," and ending with "church, churchyard, sir."

I smiled somewhat scornfully at the echo. It had no attraction for a middle-aged man, though I could very well remember a time,-which must have been twenty years ago, though at that moment it did not seem nearly so long,-when I had sought out an echo, and spoken words of endearment to it, that I might hear them repeated in a sweet sighing voice, which it pleased me to think must be like the tone of a voice I