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You cannot die like lions,

For all you are so strong;
While you are saving other lives,

God keep your own from wrong

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MENELLA B. SMEDLEY, with kind permission.

LOSS OF THE ROEBUCK.

How oft by the lamp of the pale waning moon
Would Kitty steal out from the eye of the town;
On the beach as she stood, when the wild waves would roll,
Her eye shed a torrent just fresh from the soul;
And, as o'er the ocean the billows would stray,
Her sighs follow after as moaning as they.

I saw as the ship to the harbour drew near,

Hope redden her cheek-then it blanched with chill fear;
She wish'd to enquire of the whispering crew

If they'd spoke to the Roebuck, or aught of her knew ;
For long in conjecture her fate had been toss'd,
Nor knew we for certain the Roebuck was lost.

I pitied her feelings, and saw what she'd ask,
For innocence ever looks through a thin mask;
I stepp'd up to Jack Oakum―his sad head he shook,
And cast on sweet Kitty a side-glancing look :

From an interesting little volume of poems for young folk entitled Child-World.

"The Roebuck has foundered-the crew are no more,Nor again shall Jack Bowling be welcom'd on shore!'

Sweet Kitty, suspecting, laid hold of my arm :

"O tell me," she cried, "for my soul's in alarm;

Is she lost ?"-I said nothing; whilst Jack gave a sigh,
Then down dropp'd the curtain that hung o'er her eye;
Fleeting life for a moment seem'd willing to stay;
Just flutter'd and then fled for ever away.

So droops the pale lily surcharg'd with a shower,-
Sunk down as with sorrow so dies the sweet flower;
No sunbeam returning, no spring ever gay,
Can give back the soft breath once wafted away !—
The Roebuck has foundered-the crew are no more--
And Kitty's pure spirit has passed from the shore.

MISS BLAMIRE.

THE DANGERS OF THE SEA.

Ay, sitting on your happy hearths,
Beside your mother's knee,
How should you know the miseries

And dangers of the sea!
My father was a mariner

And from my earliest years,
I can remember, night and day,
My mother's prayers and tears.

L

I can remember how she sighed
When blew the stormy gale;

And how for days she stood to watch
The long expected sail :
Hers was a silent patient grief;
But fears and long delay,

And wakeful nights and anxious days
Were wearing her away.

And when the gusty winds were loud,
And Autumn leaves were red,
I watched with heavy heart, beside
My mother's dying bed;

Just when her voice was feeblest,
The neighbours came to say,
The ship was hailed an hour before,
And then was in the bay.

Alas! too late the ship returned,
Too late her life to save;
My father closed her dying eyes,
And laid her in the grave.
He was a man of ardent hopes,

Who never knew dismay;
And, spite of grief, the winter-time

Wore cheerfully away.

He had crossed the equinoctial line,

Full seven times or more,

And sailing northward had been wrecked

On icy Labrador:

He knew the Spice-isles, every one

Where the clove and nutmeg grow,
And the aloe towers a stately tree
With clustering bells of snow.

He had gone the length of Hindostan,
Down Ganges' holy flood;

Through Persia, where the peacock broods
A wild bird of the wood;

And, in the forests of the West,

Had seen the red-deer chased,
And dwelt beneath the piny woods,
A hunter of the waste.

Oh! pleasant were the tales he told
Of lands so strange and new;
And, in my ignorance I vowed

I'd be a sailor to:

My father heard my vow with joy,

So in the early May,

We went on board a merchant-man,
Bound for Honduras' bay.

Right merrily, right merrily

We sailed before the wind,

With a briskly heaving sea before,

And the landsman's cheer behind.
There was joy for me in every league,
Delight on every strand,

And I sate for days on the high fore-top.
On the long look-out for land.

There was a joy for me in the nightly watch,

On the burning Tropic seas,

To mark the waves like living fires

Leap up to the freshening breeze. Right merrily, right merrily,

Our gallant ship went free, Until we neared the rocky sholes Within the Western sea.

Yet still none thought of danger near,
Till in the silent night,

The helmsman gave the dreadful word,
Of "breakers to the right!"

The moment that his voice was heard,
Was felt the awful shock;

The ship sprang forward with a bound,
And struck upon a rock.

"All hands aloft!" our captain cried ; In terror and dismay

They threw the cargo overboard,

And cut the masts away;

'Twas all in vain, 'twas all in vain!
The sea rushed o'er the deck,
And shattered with the beating surf,
Down went the parting wreck.

The moment that the wreck went down,
My father seized me fast,

And leaping 'mid the thundering waves,
Seized on the broken mast:

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