"Get thee back to the bed so warm, No good comes of watching a storm. "What is it to thee, I fain would know, That waves are roaring and wild winds blow? "No lover of thine's afloat to miss The harbor-lights on a night like this." "But I heard a voice cry out my name; Up from the sea on the wind it came! "Twice and thrice have I heard it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" On her pillow the sister tossed her head, “Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. "In the tautest schooner that ever swam He rides at anchor in Annisquam. "And if in peril from swamping sea Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?" But the girl heard only the wind and tide, "O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong; I hear it again, so loud and long. Annie! Annie!' I hear it call, And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!" Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, "Thou liest! He never would call thy name! "If he did, I would pray the wind and sea To keep him forever from thee and me!" Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast; The young girl hushed on her lips a groan, The solemn joy of her heart's release peace. "Dearest!" she whispered, under breath, "Life was a lie, but true is death. "The love I hid from myself away Shall crown me now in the light of day. "My ears shall never to wooer list, Never by lover my lips be kissed. "Sacred to thee am I henceforth, Thou in heaven and I on earth!" She came and stood by her sister's bed: "Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said. “The wind and the waves their work have done, We shall see him no more beneath the sun. "Little will reck that heart of thine, It loved him not with a love like mine. "I, for his sake, were he but here, "Though hands should tremble, and eyes be wet, And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. "But now my soul with his soul I wed; Thine the living, and mine the dead!” John Greenleaf Whittier. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE A Leaf from King Alfred's Orosius OTHERE, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; Like the sea-tide on a beach, And Alfred, King of the Saxons, "So far I live to the northward, To the east are wild mountain-chains, "So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside ; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone, and reindeer skins, And ropes of walrus hide. "I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas, "Of Iceland and of Greenland, And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep; For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know; So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, "To the west of me was the ocean, To the right the desolate shore, But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more. "The days grew longer and longer, Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before me, "The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, |