Like refuse on the yeast of death
That bellows, raves, and boils beneath.
One hapless wretch around his waist
A knotted rope has loosely braced;
When from the stay to which he clings
The jerking mast the doomed one flings,
It slips, and by the neck he swings:
Death grins and glares in hideous shape,
No hope, no pity, no escape!
Still on and on, all day the same,
Through all that brilliant summer day
Beneath a sky so blithe and blue
The wild white whirl of waters flew,
In stunning volleys overswept
And beat the black ship's yielding frame,
And all around roared, tossed, and leapt
Mad-wreathing swathes of snow! affray
More dire than most disastrous rout
Of some conceivable array

Of thronged white elephants,

as they

Their phalanx broke in warfare waged

In Siam or the Punjaub, raged

And writhed their great white trunks about,
With screams that shrill as trumpets rung,
And drove destruction everywhere

In maddened terror at the shout
Of turbaned hosts and torches' flare
Full in their monstrous faces flung;
Wide horror! but to this, no less,
This furious lashing wilderness,
Innocuous-seeming, transient, tame!

Still on, still on, like fiends of Hell
Whiter than angels, frantic, fell,
Through all that summer day the same
The merciless murderous breakers came,
And to the mizzen-top that swayed
With every breach those breakers made,
Unaided, impotent to aid,

The mates and master clung all day.
There, while the sun onlooking gay
Triumphant trod his bright highway,—
There, till his cloudless rich decline,
Faint in the blinding deafening drench
Of salt waves roaring down the whine
And creaking groans each grinding wrench
Took from the tortured timbers, — there
All day, all day, in their despair,
The gently brave, the roughly good,
Collected, calm and silent stood.
That hideous doom they firmly face;
To no unmanly moans give way,
No frantic gestures; none disgrace
With wild bravado, vain display,
Their end, but like true men await
The dread extremity of fate.
Alas! and yet no tongue can tell

What thoughts of life and loved ones swell

With anguish irrepressible,

The hearts these horrors fail to quell.

The master urges them to prayer,

"No hope on earth, be heaven your care!"

And is it mockery - Oh, but mark

-

Those masts and crowding figures, dark
Against the flush of love and rest
Suffusing all the gorgeous west
In tearful golden glory drest,
Such soft majestic tenderness,
As of a power that longs to bless
With ardors of divinest breath
All but one raging spot of death;
For all the wide expanse beside
Is blushing, beauteous as a bride,
And a fierce wedding-day indeed

259

It seems, of Life and Death, with none to heed.

And now the foam spurts up between
The starting deck-planks; downward bowed
The mighty masts terrific lean;
Then each with its despairing crowd
Of life, with one tremendous roar
Falls like a tower, - and all is o'er.

W

THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

Alfred Domett.

HENE'ER those southern seas I sail,

I find my eyes instinctive turning
Where, pure and marvellously pale,
Four sacred stars are brightly burning.

A star is set above the thorns;

Two mark the bleeding palms extended;
And one the wounded feet adorns, -

In four the potent cross is blended.

One only hand had power to place
The symbol there, and that immortal;
Those fair, celestial fires may grace
And beautify the heavenly portal.

Whatever danger I may meet

Upon the wild, disastrous ocean,
Still turn my trusting eyes to greet
That flaming cross with true devotion.

Nor cease, my willing heart, to give
Thy prayers and every just endeavor;
For only by the cross I live,

And by the cross I live forever.

Charles Warren Stoddard.

APPENDIX.

Bermudas.

BERMOOTHES.

[NDER the eaves of a Southern sky,

UND

Where the cloud-roof bends to the ocean-floor,

Hid in lonely seas, the Bermoothes lie,

An emerald cluster that Neptune bore Away from the covetous earth-gods' sight, And placed in a setting of sapphire light.

Prospero's realm, and Miranda's isles,
Floating to music of Ariel

Upon fantasy's billow, that glows and smiles.
Flushing response to the lovely spell, -
Tremulous color and outline seem

Lucent as glassed in a life-like dream.

And away and afar as in dreams we drift
Glimmer the blossoming orange groves;
And the dolphin-tints of the waters shift,

And the angel-fish through the pure lymph moves