Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver: hear, O hear!

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad, ev'n from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height-

The locks of the approaching storm.

Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed. One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.

V.

Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is :
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous One!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy!

O Wind,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

THE Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea!

I am where I would ever be;

With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love (oh! how I love) to ride
On the fierce foaming bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,

And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the south-west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull tame shore,
But I lov'd the great Sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was, and is to me;
For I was born on the open Sea!

The waves were white, and red the moon,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,

Full fifty summers a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend and a power to range, But never have sought, nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he come to me,

Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!

- BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.

43.

WINTER.

WHEN icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit! tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl-
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tuwhoo!

Tuwhit! tuwhoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

44.

CHRISTMAS CAROL.

OUTLANDERS, whence come ye last?

The snow in the street and the wind on the door. Through what green seas and great have ye past? Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.

From far away, O masters mine,

The snow in the street and the wind on the door. We come to bear you goodly wine,

Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor,