ELIHU. BY ALICE Carey. "O SAILOR, tell me, tell me truc, Is my little lad-my Elihu A sailing in your ship?" The sailor's eyes were dimmed with dew. "Your little lad? Your Elihu ?" He said with trembling lip; What little lad?-as if there could be "What little lad, do you say?” The Gray Swan sailed away." The other day? The sailor's eyes "The other day?-the Swan?" His heart began in his throat to rise. "Ay, ay, sir; here in the cupboard lies The jacket he had on." "And so your lad is gone! "Gone with the Swan." "And did she stand With her anchor clutching hold of the sand, For a month, and never stir?" "Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land, Like a lover kissing his lady's hand, The wild sea kissing her A sight to remember, sir.” "But, my good mother, do you know, I stood on the Gray Swan's deck, "And did the little lawless lad, That has made you sick and made you sad, Be sure, he sailed with the crew- "And he has never written line, "Hold-if 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine; Besides he may be in the brine; And could he write from the grave? Tut, man! what would you have?" "Gone twenty years! a long, long cruise; 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse; But if the lad still live, And come back home, think you you can You're mad as the sea; you rave— The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, "My God!-my Father!-is it true? My little lad-my Elihu ? And is it? is it?-is it you? My blessed boy-my child My dead-my living child!" LOVE. By S. T. Coleridge. ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights, All are but ministers of Love, Oft in my waking dreams do I The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, She leaned against the armed man, Few sorrows hath she of her own, The songs that make her grieve. I played a soft and doleful air, She listened with a flitting blush, I told her of the knight that wore I told her how he pined: and ah! She listened with a flitting blush, And she forgave me that I gazed Too fondly on her face! But when I told the cruel scorn That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, There came and looked him in the face And that he knew it was a Fiend, And that unknowing what he did, And how she wept, and clasped his knees; The scorn that crazed his brain ; And that she nursed him in a cave; His dying words-but when I reached G |