All in vain the watchman numbers,

God must watch while Israel slumbers; By thy mercy and thy might,

Lend us, Lord, a happy night.

Hark ye, neighbours! hear the hour;
Four is tolling from the tower;
Fourfold is the gospel field,

Say, doth thine the good fruit yield?

73

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

It was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea,

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds

That оре in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow,
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spoke an old sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish main,

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the North East;
The snow fell hissing on the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring; what may it be?"

O say,

""Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"

And he steered for the open sea.

“O father! I hear the sound of guns; O say, what may it be?

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light;
O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be,

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight, dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
T'wards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted, a dreary wreck;

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool;

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank;
Ho! ho! the breakers roared.

At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach
A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus

In the midnight and the snow;

Christ, save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

74

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

It was a summer evening,

Old Caspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;

And by him sported on the green

His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

1 Blenheim, fought between the French and Bavarians on the one side, and the English, with their allies, under Marlborough, on the other. Marlborough won a great victory. It took place August 18th, 1704. Blenheim is in Bavaria.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,
That he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found;

He came to ask what he had found,

That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Caspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant2 by;

And then the old man shook his head,

And with a natural sigh—

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

“I find them in the garden, for
There's many hereabout;

And often, when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out;
For many a thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in the great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they killed each other for."

"It was the English," Caspar cried,
"That put the French to rout ;3
But what they killed each other for
I could not well make out;

* expectant, looking wistfully.

3 rout, flight, in disorder.