FUNEREAL SKETCHES, No. XXL 

 SONG OF THE WATER SPIRITS. 



There is not a spot on the earth so free 

 As the fathomless depths of our own blue sea, 

 Not a home more sweet or a place more fair 

 Than the grottos of coral weVe builded there. 

 And carved the posterns with rare device, 

 And inlaid the roof-trees with pearls of price, 

 And jewels such as the fiery sun 

 Ne*er viewed on the crown of Solomon : 

 Where life is a roll of delight unfurled 

 In joys not known to the upper world. 



When Man, fierce Passion's eldest child. 

 Mocks the roar of the billows wild, 

 We love to rise from our shelly cave 

 To the moonlight side of some heaving wave, 

 And, reclined in its watery breast, to mark 

 The luminous tiack of the basking shark; 

 When the sands of night are well nigh run, 

 And battle wakes with the morning gun. 

 And the shark soaring high at break of day 

 Ready to dart on his coming prey. 



Little we feel for their mutual slaughter 

 Little when hurricanes sweep the water. 

 Sorrow, is ours for the seaman's doom 

 Rocked by the swell in his living tomb, 

 W hen ocean sleeps, and each parched mouth 

 Gasps in the steam of the sweltering south ; 

 When, worse than the roar of a hundred blasts. 

 The spars and the canvass against the masts 

 Are creaking and flapping all day long, 

 Like an ominous bird with her funeral song : 

 When at night the stars, on the traitor wave. 

 Are as cowslips strewn on an infant's grave : 

 Then we grieve, while the sea and air 

 Laugh like demons at their despair. 



Eos. 



