My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widowed race be run ;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.

I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,
And travelled men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands ;
And thy dark freight, a vanished life.

So bring him; we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: oh to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover sod,

That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God,

Than if with thee, the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine,
And hands so often clasped in mine
Should toss with tangle and with shells.

'TENNYSON.

THE STEAMBOAT.

199

THE STEAMBOAT.

SEE how yon flaming herald treads
The ridged and rolling waves,
As, crashing o'er their crested head,
She bows her surly slaves!

With foam before and fire behind,
She rends the clinging sea,
That flies before the roaring wind,
Beneath her hissing lee.

The morning spray, like sea-born flowers,
With heaped and glistening bells,
Falls round her fast, in ringing showers,
With every wave that swells:

And, burning o'er the midnight deep,
In lurid fringes thrown,

The living gems of ocean sweep

Along her flashing zone.

With clashing wheel, and lifting keel,

And smoking torch on high,

When winds are loud and billows reel,

She thunders foaming by;

When seas are silent and serene,

With even beam she glides

The sunshine glimmering through the green

That skirts her gleaming sides.

Now, like a wild nymph, far apart
She veils her shadowy form,
The beating of her restless heart

Still sounding through the storm;
Now answers, like a courtly dame,
The reddening surges o'er,
With flying scarf of spangled flame,
The Pharos of the shore.

To-night yon pilot shall not sleep,
Who trims his narrowed sail;
To-night yon frigate scarce shall keep
Her broad breast to the gale;
And many a foresail, scooped and strained,
Shall break from yard and stay,
Before this smoky wreath has stained
The rising mist of day.

Hark! hark! I hear yon whistling shroud, I see yon quivering mast;

The black throat of the hunted cloud

Is panting forth the blast!

An hour, and, whirled like winnowing chaff, The giant surge shall fling

His tresses o'er yon pennon staff,

White as the sea-bird's wing!

Yet rest, ye wanderers of the deep;
Nor wind nor wave shall tire

ADDRESS TO A STEAMBOAT.

Those fleshless arms, whose pulses leap
With floods of living fire.

Sleep on,-and, when the morning light
Streams o'er the shining bay,

O think of those for whom the night

Shall never wake in day!

201

OLIVER W. HOLMES.

ADDRESS TO A STEAMBOAT.

FREIGHTED with passengers of every sort,
A motley throng, thou leav'st the busy port.
Thy long and ample deck-where scattered lie
Baskets and cloaks, and shawls of scarlet dye-
Where dogs and children through the crowd are
straying,

And, on the bench apart, the fiddler playing,
When matron dames to tresselled seats repair
Seems on the gleaming waves a floating fair.

-

Its dark form on the sky's pale azure cast, Towers from this clustering group thy pillared

mast:

The dense smoke issuing from its narrow vent
Is to the air in curly volumes sent,
Which, coiling and uncoiling on the wind,
Trails like a writhing serpent far behind.

Beneath, as each merged wheel its motion plies,
On either side the white churned waters rise,
And, newly parted from the noisy fray,
Track with light ridgy foam the recent way;
Then far diverged, in many a welting line
Of lustre, on the distant surface shine.

Thou hold'st thy course in independent pride; No leave ask'st thou of either wind or tide; To whate'er point the breeze, inconstant, veer, Still doth thy careless helmsman onward steer, As if the stroke of some magician's wand Had lent thee power the ocean to command. What is this power which thus within thee lurks, And all unseen, like a masked giant works? E'en that which gentle dames at morning tea, From silver urn ascending, daily see, With tressy wreathings, borne upon the air, Like loosened ringlets of a lady's hair; Or rising from the enamelled cup beneath, With the soft fragrance of an infant's breath: That which, all silvered by the moon's pale beam, Precedes the mighty Geyser's up-cast stream, What time, with bellowing din, exploded forth, It decks the midnight of the frozen north, While travellers from their skin-spread couches rise,

To gaze upon the sight with wondering eyes.

*