Inconstancy the same;

And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.

II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC.

THE dews are heavy on my brow; My breath comes hard and low; Yet, mother, dear, grant one request, Before your boy must go.

Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,

And ere my senses fail :

Place me once more, O mother, dear!

Astride the old fence-rail.

The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail ! How oft these youthful legs,

With Alice' and Ben Bolt's were hung Across those wooden pegs.

'Twas there the nauseating smoke

Of my first pipe arose:

O mother, dear! these agonies

Are far less keen than those.

Songs Without Sense.

I know where lies the hazel dell,

Where simple Nellie sleeps;

I know the cot of Nettie Moore,
And where the willow weeps.

I know the brookside and the mill:
But all their pathos fails

Beside the days when once I sat
Astride the old fence-rails.

241

GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN.

(MASSACHUSETTS SHORE, 1800.)

I MIND it was but yesterday,

The sun was dim, the air was chill;
Below the town, below the hill,

The sails of my son's ship did fill,—

My Jacob, who was cast away.

He said, "God keep you, mother, dear,"

But did not turn to kiss his wife;

They had some foolish, idle strife;

Her tongue was like a two-edged knife,
And he was proud as any peer.

Howbeit that night I took no note

Of sea nor sky, for all was drear;

I marked not that the hills looked near,

Nor that the moon, though curved and clear,

Through curd-like scud did drive and float.

Grandmother Tenterden.

For with my darling went the joy

Of autumn woods and meadows brown;
I came to hate the little town;

It seemed as if the sun went down
With him, my only darling boy.

It was the middle of the night,
The wind it shifted west-by-south;
It piled high up the harbour mouth;
The marshes, black with summer drouth,
Were all abroad with sea-foam white.

243

It was the middle of the night,—
The sea upon the garden leapt,
And my son's wife in quiet slept,
And I, his mother, waked and wept,
When lo! there came a sudden light.

And there he stood! his seaman's dress
All wet and dripping seemed to be ;
The pale blue fires of the sea

Dripped from his garments constantly,

I could not speak through cowardness.

"I come through night and storm,” he said; “Through storm and night and death,” said he, "To kiss my wife, if it so be

That strife still holds 'twixt her and me,

For all beyond is Peace," he said.

"The sea is His, and He who sent
The wind and wave can soothe their strife;
And brief and foolish is our life.”

He stooped and kissed his sleeping wife,
Then sighed, and, like a dream, he went.

Now, when my darling kissed not me,
But her his wife-who did not wake,
My heart within me seemed to break ;
I swore a vow! nor thenceforth spake
Of what my clearer eyes did see.

And when the slow weeks brought him not, Somehow we spake of aught beside;

For she, her hope upheld her pride;

And I,-in me all hope had died,

And my son passed as if forgot.