light opens from the hom-moc already; if she will only bear her canvas we shall go clear."

A report, like that of a cannon, interrupted his exclamation, and something resembling a white cloud was seen drifting before the wind from the head of the ship, till it was driven into the gloom far to leeward.

""Tis the jib, blown from the bolt-ropes," said the commander of the frigate. "This is no time to spread light duck; but the mainsail may stand it yet."

"The sail would laugh at a tornado," returned the lieutenant; "but that mast springs like a piece of steel." "Silence, all!" cried the pilot. "Now, gentlemen, we shall soon know our fate. Let her luff; luff you can."

This warning effectually closed all discourse, and the hardy mariners, knowing that they had already done all in the power of man to insure their safety, stood in breathless anxiety awaiting the result. At a short distance ahead of them the whole ocean was white with foam, and the waves, instead of rolling on in regular succession, appeared to be tossing about in mad gambols. A single streak of dark billows, not half a cable's length in width, could be discerned running into this chaos of water; but it was soon lost to the eye, amid the confusion of the disturbed element. Along this narrow path the vessel moved more heavily than before, being brought so near the wind as to keep her sails touching. The pilot, silently, proceeded to the wheel, and with his own hands he undertook the steerage of the ship. No noise proceeded from the frigate to interrupt the horrid tumult of the ocean, and she entered the channel among the breakers with the silence of a desperate calinness. Twenty times, as the foam rolled away to leeward, the crew were on the eve of uttering their joy, as they supposed the vessel past the danger; but breaker after breaker would still rise before them, following each other into the general mass, to check their exultation. Occasionally, the fluttering of the sails would be heard; and when the looks of the startled seamen were turned to the wheel, they beheld the

stranger grasping its spokes, with his quick eye glancing from the water to the canvas. At length the ship reached a point where she appeared to be rushing directly into the jaws of destruction, when suddenly her course was changed, and her head receded rapidly from the wind. At the same instant the voice of the pilot was heard, shouting,

66

Square away the yards!—in mainsail!

A general burst from the crew echoed, "Square away the yards!" and quick as thought, the frigate was seen gliding along the channel, before the wind. The eye had hardly time to dwell on the foam, which seemed like clouds driving in the heavens, and directly the gallant vessel issued from her perils, and rose and fell on the heavy waves of the open sea.

XXXII. -THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

LONGFELLOW.

[HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW is a native of Portland, Maine, and was graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825. Soon after leaving college he went to Europe, and remained there till 1829, when he returned home and assumed the duties of professor of modern languages at Bowdoin College. He resigned this post in 1835, and visited Europe again, and upon his return in 1836, was appointed to a similar professorship in the University at Cambridge. Here he has resided ever since, but he resigned his professorship in 1853.

Mr. Longfellow holds a very high rank among the authors of America, and is one of the most popular of living poets. He has written Evangeline and The Golden Legend, narrative poems of considerable length; The Spanish Student, a play; and a great number of smaller pieces. He has a fruitful imagination, under the control of the most perfect taste, and a remarkable power of illustrating moods of mind and states of feeling by material forms. He has a great command of beautiful diction, and equal skill in the structure of his verse. His poetry is marked by tenderness of feeling, purity of sentiment, elevation of thought, and healthiness of tone. He understands and can express all the affections of the human heart. The happy delight in his poems; and they fall with soothing and sympathizing touch upon those who have suffered. His readers are more than admirers; they become friends. And over all that he has written there hangs a beautiful ideal light, the atmosphere of poetry,which illuminates his page as the sunshine does the natural landscape.

Mr. Longfellow has also won enduring praise as a prose writer. His Outre-mer, a collection of travelling sketches and miscellaneous essays, his Hyperion, a romance, and his Kavanagh, a domestic story, are marked by the same traits as his poetry. He is a "warbler of poetic prose;" and would be entitled to the honors of a poet had he never written a line of verse. His Hyperion, especially, is full of beautiful description, rich fancy, and sweet and pensive thought. He is also a man of extensive literary attainments, familiar with the languages of modern Europe, and a great master in the difficult art of translation.]

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.

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.

❝ 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."

"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 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 savéd 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.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool;

But the cruel rocks they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank:
Ho! Ho! the breakers roared.

At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach,
A fisherman stood aghast

To see the form of a maiden fair

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

Norman's Woe is a reef of rocks on the northern coast of Massachu setts, between Manchester and Gloucester. In 1839 a vessel named the Resperus was actually lost there.