With his gunners' rammers run

Through our ports at every load,

Till clear the blue beyond us through our yawning timbers

showed.

Yet with entrails torn we clung

Like the Spartan to our fox,

And on deck no coward tongue

Wailed the enemy's hard knocks,

Nor that all below us trembled like a wreck upon the rocks.

VIII.

Then a thought rose in my brain,

As through Channel mists the sun.
From our tops a fire like rain

Drove below decks every one

Of the enemy's ship's company to hide or work a gun,
And that thought took shape as I

On the "Richard's" yard lay out,

That a man might do and die,

If the doing brought about

Freedom for his home and country, and his messmates' cheering shout!

IX.

Then I crept out in the dark

Till I hung above the hatch

Of the "Serapis "—a mark

For her marksmen -with a match

And a hand-grenade, but lingered just a moment more to

snatch

One last look at sea and sky!

At the lighthouse on the hill!

At the harvest-moon on high!

And our pine flag fluttering still;

Then turned and down her yawning throat I launched that devil's pill!

Then a blank was all between

As the flames around me spun !

Had I fired the magazine ?

Was the victory lost or won?

Nor knew I till the fight was o'er but half my work was

done:

For I lay among the dead

In the cockpit of our foe,
With a roar above my head—

Till a trampling to and fro,

And a lantern showed my mate's face, and I knew what

now you know!

SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS.

The Miracle of Padre Junipero.

THIS is the tale that the Chronicle

Tells of the wonderful miracle

Wrought by the pious Padre Serro,

The very reverend Junipero.

The heathen stood on his ancient mound,
Looking over the desert bound

Into the distant, hazy South,

Over the dusty and broad champaign,
Where, with many a gaping mouth

And fissure, cracked by the fervid drouth,
For seven months had the wasted plain
Known no moisture of dew or rain.

The wells were empty and choked with sand;
The rivers had perished from the land;
Only the sea-fogs to and fro

Slipped like ghosts of the streams below.
Deep in its bed lay the river's bones,
Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones,
And tracked o'er the desert faint and far,
Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar.

Thus they stood as the sun went down
Over the foot-hills bare and brown;

VOL. I.

E