UNSEEN SPIRITS.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true;

For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo.
But honored well are charms to sell,
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair,

A slight girl, lily-pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail:

'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,

And nothing could avail.

No

mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray;

For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way.

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven

By man is cursed alway!

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE.

My life is like the summer rose

That opens to the morning sky, But, ere the shades of evening close, Is scattered on the ground

Yet on the rose's humble bed

to die;

The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see.
But none shall weep a tear for me!

My life is like the autumn leaf

That trembles in the moon's pale ray;
Its hold is frail, its date is brief:

Restless and soon to pass away;
Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree.
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!

My life is like the prints which feet
Have left on Tampa's desert strand:
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

All trace will vanish from the sand;
Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea.

But none, alas! shall mourn for me!

RICHARD HENRY WILDE.

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 ope 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 spake 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.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
The snow fell hissing in 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! O say what may it be?"

"'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!"

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

"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,
Towards 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.