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Filled with children in happy play,
Parted its moorings and drifted clear.
Drifted clear beyond reach or call,-
Thirteen children there were in all,-
All adrift in the lower bay!

III.

Said a hard-faced skipper, “God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!"
Said his wife, "My darling will hear my call,
Whether in sea or heaven she bide."

And she lifted a quavering voice and high,
Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry,
Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

IV.

The fog drove down on each laboring crew,

Veiled each from each and the sky and shore; There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar;

And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before.

V.

They come no more. But they tell the tale
That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef,
The mackerel-fishers shorten sail,

For the signal they know will bring relief,—
For the voices of children, still at play
In phantom hulk that drifts alway
Through channels whose waters never fail.

VI.

It is but a foolish shipman's tale,
A theme for a poet's idle page,

But still when the mists of doubt prevail,
And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age,
We hear from the misty, troubled shore
The voice of the children gone before,
Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

F. BRET HARTE

XXX.-TWO VIEWS OF CHRISTMAS.

SCROOGE and his NEPHEW. Scene.-The Counting-Room of Scrooge. Nephew. A merry Christmas, uncle!

Scrooge. Bah! humbug!

Neph. Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean nat, I am sure?

Scrooge. I do. Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I had my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!

Neph. Uncle!

Scrooge. Nephew, keep Christmas time in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.

Neph. Keep it! But you don't keep it!

Scrooge. Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!

Neph. There are many good things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, apart from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say. God bless it!

Scrooge. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don't go into Parliament.

Neph. Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.

Scrooge. I'll see you hanged first.
Neph. But why, uncle? Why?
Scrooge. Why did you get married?
Neph. Because I fell in love.

Scrooge (contemptuously). Because you fell in love!-Good afternoon!

Neph. Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?

Scrooge. Good afternoon!

Neph. I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?

Scrooge. Good afternoon!

Neph. I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So, A Merry Christmas, uncle!

Scrooge. Good afternoon!

Neph. And A Happy New-Year!

Scrooge. Good afternoon!

[Exit Nephew.

CHARLES DICKENS.

XXXI.—THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR.

I.

NOME, see the Dolphin's anchor forged; 't is at a white heat

COME,

now;

The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge's brow

The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound;
And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,
All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare;
Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.

· II.

The windlass strains the tackle chains, the black mound heaves

below,

And red and deep a hundred veins burst out at every throe;
It rises, roars, rends all outright-O Vulcan, what a glow!
'Tis blinding white, 't is blasting bright; the high sun shines not so;
The high sun sees not, on the earth, such fiery, fearful show;
The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy, lurid row
Of smiths, that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe;
As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing monster slow
Sinks on the anvil-all about the faces fiery grow-

"Hurrah!" they shout-"leap out!-leap out!" bang, bang, the sledges go.

III.

Leap out, leap out, my masters; leap out and lay on load!
Let's forge a goodly anchor, a bower, thick and broad;
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road;
The low reef roaring on her lee, the roll of ocean poured
From stem to stern, sea after sea, the main-mast by the board;
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains;
But courage still, brave mariners, the bower yet remains,

And not an inch to flinch he deigns save when ye pitch sky-high,
Then moves his head, as though he said, "Fear nothing-here

am I!"

IV.

Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time;
Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime;
But while ye swing your sledges, sing; and let the burden be,
The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we.
Strike in, strike in; the sparks begin to dull their rustling red;
Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be sped;
Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array,
For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay;
Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here,
For the yeo-heave-o, and the heave away, and the sighing sea-
man's cheer.

V.

In livid and obdurate gloom, he darkens down at last,
A shapely one he is and strong, as e'er from cat was cast.

A trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me, What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep-green sea!

VI.

O deep-sea diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
The hoary monster's palaces! methinks what joy 't were now
To go plump, plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,
And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging
tails!

Then deep in tangle woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn,

And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn; To leave the subtle sworder-fish, of bony blade forlorn,

And for the ghastly grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn.

VII.

O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine ?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night 't is thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play;
But, shamer of our little sports, forgive the name I gave;
A fisher's joy is to destroy-thine office is to save.

VIII.

O lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band, Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend, With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing their ancient friend;

O, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round

thee,

Thine iron side would swell with pride, thou 'dst leap within the

sea!

IX.

Give honor to their memories, who left the pleasant strand

To shed their blood so freely for the love of Fatherland-
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave
So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing wave—

O, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honor him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!

S. FERGUSON.

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