His eye was on the Inchcape float; The boat is lower'd, the boatmen row, Down sunk the bell with a gurgling sound, The bubbles rose and burst around; Quoth Sir Ralph, "The next who comes to the rock Won't bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok." Sir Ralph the Rover sail'd away, He scour'd the seas for many a day; And now grown rich with plunder'd store, So thick a haze o'erspreads the sky, On the deck the rover takes his stand, Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon, "Canst hear," said one, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell." They hear no sound, the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,"Oh! heavens! it is the Inchcape Rock!" Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; But even now, in his dying fear, One dreadful sound could the rover hear, THE OCEAN. LORD BYRON. OH! that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements !-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted-Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err, In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean―roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin—his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain, The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou;— Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime— Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And trusted to thy billows far and near, DECEMBER. [From the "Poetical Calendar."] MR. WILLIAM HEY. As human life begins and ends with woe, Which the Church echoes still in sweet accord, And ever shall, while Time his course doth fill, 66 Glory to God on high! to men peace and good will." 46 DIED AT THE STATION-HOUSE. JAMES B. TOMALIN. MR. COMBE MARKED THE SHEET OFF, "DIED AT THE STATIONHOUSE."-Southwark police report. "DIED at the station-house." Ah, Mr. Combe! You've marked off many a sorrowful doom, But that dark record of sin and woe Can hardly a sadder entry show. "Drunk and incapable"-so it ranShunned of woman and scorned of man; Outcast hawker from bar to bar, Where the poison-fire and the gas-lights are: Thrust forth, " insensible," into the night, "Turned out drunk.” Only think, Mr. Combe, There's something worse than an "inn's worst room". The bleak outside of the closed inn-door, And never a bench but the stony floor. There she was found, alone with Death, And, yet, we can fancy that face, Mr. Combe, |