The Mutineer.

A BALLAD NARRATIVE. BY EDMUND OLLIER.

PART I.

Away, away we bounded

Through the light and driving foam, With joke, and song, and dancing,

And light hearts, towards our home. Oh, we sometimes grew nigh frantic At the thought of seeing home!

A good stout breeze behind us,

Foam-silver'd the dark blue; And the sails made joyous music

As we swiftly onward flew, Like a moving mine of treasure From the land of far Peru.

For weeks we sailed on, startling
The wide solitudes with glee;
Till at length one day a great calm
Settled down upon the sea:
The sick air fell a-swooning

All along the swooning sea.

From sail to sail the cobwebs

Hung as motionless as clay;
And on the tranced ocean,
'Neath our ship's black shadow, lay
A scum of dust and feathers,
Undisturb'd from day to day.*

All around us and above us,
From the morning till the night,
The blue sky, and the blue sea
Shone insufferably bright;
And the tyrannous sun, all naked,
Rode in floods of withering light.

No sound, no change, no motion!
'Twas a weary life we led,
With the dazzling sea before us,

And the scorching sun o'erhead.
We thought of home; and it made us
Almost wish that we were dead.

No work had we-no pastime-
Not a sail to shift or trim;
Nothing to do but gaze out

At the far horizon's brim,
Until the brain gat dizzy,

*

And the eyes were sore and dim.

"In one place lay

Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday."

NO. 1362.

DONNE-" The Calm."

So at first that dread conception

Seem'd a faint and wavering gleamA thing that came and vanish'd,

Like pale faces in a dream;
But it grew and grew, and gloried
In the pride of strength extreme,

Till in time it fasten'd on me,

Like a demon's fangs clench'd tight: By day it was my messmate,

And my bedfellow by night: 'Twas a Voice heard in my slumber, And a Phantom in my sight.

Then outspake a comrade: "Brother,
Every eye thy face doth cow,
And thou skulk'st about in corners,
As though all men fancied now
They saw some dark thoughts written
On the paleness of thy brow.

"In thy sleep I hear thee muttering: Sometimes sharply dost thou wail, What time the ghostly moonlight

Lies a-sleeping on the sail. Something weighs upon thy spirits; Speak, and tell me all thy tale."

Then I spake.-A dreadful calmness

In his fixed eyeballs reign'd,
As I spake, which told me plainly

That his soul was fully gain'd.
Oh, the eye hath mightier language
Than the tongue hath ere attain'd!

And so, with devilish cunning,

We crept on from man to man, And with words of honey'd poison Drew them over to our plan. In a week more, I was leader

Of a fierce and reckless clan.

And then, one sultry noontide,

Upon deck we all did hie: Right in the hot mid-heavens

Flamed the sun- -God's visible eye; Below, the unconscious victims

Slept their last sleep peacefully.

So I went unto the ladder,

And aloud I 'gan to call, "A breeze! a breeze! The sails fill! Come up quickly, one and all!" Good Lord! it was a strange sight,

How they pour'd up, one and all!

Forth the knives leap from their scabbards,

With a sharp and hungry gleam, Fiercely lightning in the sun-glareThen a shudder and a scream: Dying faces dropp'd all round me, Staring like a nightmare dream.

For at once the whole assembly

In close fight were dash'd about; Old and young, and strong and feeble, Hurl'd in one confusèd routOne wild chaos, ever shifting,

Of fierce faces, yell and shout;

Cursing, stamping, wrestling, tugging;
Deadly clash of weapons bare;
Lips compressed in rigid passion;
Cries that stunn'd the shuddering air;
Blood, confusion, madness, terror,
Frenzy, agony, despair!

Thus we fought on, till our victims

Dropp'd down heavily, and died.Oh God! the deck was flooded

With a hot and scarlet tide; Yea, the very sails were reeking,

Like the weapons by our side.

They lay there, gash'd and bloody,
Yet with scarce a look of pain:
So calm were their closed eyelids,

I could hardly think them slain;
But the silence that suceeeded

Fell like lead upon my brain!

I stood as one death-stricken;

For methought the sky o'erhead Was throng'd with awful faces,

Looking down at me in dread: Below, the terrible ocean

Seem'd one universal red.

But we laugh'd, and drank, and feasted,
And we danced and yell'd for glee,
And trampled down the dead men
In our fiendish jubilee.
Their stillness made us shudder;
So we flung them in the sea.

PART II.

Down, down they sank, and vanish'd, With a dull and heavy motion; Down, down, like thunder-bullets,

In the flat and sheeted ocean.

A few black beads came hurrying up, As if in wild commotion.

But the coming tempest roused me

Into action: else I might Have lain there until doomsday, Lost to sense and motion quite. So up I rose-but not

Until the Sun was out of sight.

PART III.

Away! The winds seem frantic,

And the waves are mad with pain; How they writhe, and boil, and wrestle, And heave up, and sink again! Rave on! This outer tempest Lulls the tempest of the brain.

And now the darkness open'd

With the lightning's horrid grin. Again the dead men's faces,

Swarming, swarming far within The path of the quick red fire!

These thy wages are, O Sin!

The darkness closed around us.

Then a voice was heard, which said: "For six days shalt thou wander

Through this Ocean of the Dead: On the seventh, the dark waters Shall unite above thy head.

"Ye have strangled your own being:
'Gainst yourselves ye do rebel:
Ye have wed with Death, the Spectre
And Destroyer: ye must dwell
With stark annihilation,

Wherein lies the deepest Hell."
It ceas'd-that deadly whisper:

The deep ocean heard the sound, And hung its head, and listened:

The winds stopp'd in their wild bound, And laid them down in quiet,

For the Shadow of Death hung round.

The blood in our hearts stopp'd beating,
And the very air fell dead;
The wheels of Life lay moveless;

And behold! when darkness fled,
The sky, my God! was crumbling
Slowly, slowly overhead.

Oh, drearily the ocean

Stretch'd away beneath the eye; Oh, drearily above us

Hung the blind and ghastly sky; Oh, drearily did all things

Like a curse upon us lie.

The livid light it shrivell'd,

As it fell upon the sea, And turn'd to loathsome creatures, Staring forth full drearily: But all were dead and movelessDead and moveless as the sea.

Ever and anon we floated

Past some swampy island's ledge, Where strange trees, black and jagged,

Leant across the water's edge: But there was not air sufficient To upheave the drowsy sedge.

And once we pass'd alongside

Of a low and sandy creek, Where a man lay, dead or sleeping, And his mouth was very meek: But there was not air enough

To stir the dust upon his cheek.

Still slowly moved we onward
Through the black and waveless deep;
And still the heavy silence

Over everything did creep-
The heavy, heavy silence,

And the dull and dreamless sleep!

We could not talk to cheer us,

For our speech had vanished; -Nor stir: sweet Life, the Angel,

From our bodies forth had fled; -Nor think; or if we thought,

It was of Death and of the dead.

So pass'd the first six days.

Upon the seventh, when the sea Ope'd, and we felt our vessel

Sinking down perceptibly,
I heard my own heart praying;
And at first it startled me.

It cried: "Oh, Heaven, hear me! Give me back again my breath! Oh, let me not be mated,

Like a beast, to beastly Death. It is for Life-for Being

That my spirit hungereth!

"Let me live, oh Heart of all things, Whom to Love means but to Know; Let me live, that I may see Thee

Plainly, even here below; Let me live, Thou wondrous Life-fount, Though Life bring extremest woe!

"Death's beginning is its ending: Life, in thousand different ways, To higher Life attaineth,

Opening vistas through earth's haze, Till mortal vision faileth

In the glory and the blaze.

"Oh, let me catch some portion Of the Life that lies within The earth, and sky, and ocean!

-I will love my kith and kin, And in rivers of repentance I will wash away my sin."

I ceas'd. The ship sank lower,
And I gave a quick, sharp scream;
And lo, the ghastly vision

Dropp'd from off me like a dream:
The breath of Life made music
In my heart. 'Twas bliss extreme.

I stood outside my cottage

On the yellow ocean sand: Fresh breezes from the water Went a-dancing o'er the land: Singing to the red-lipp'd sea-shells, Throbb'd the white waves on the strand.

Each sight and sound about me Dropp'd a blessing on my head: The fierce and moody devil

From my blood had vanished; Heaven's breath fells weetly on me; And I felt that Death was dead.

The Buty of Hope.

BY JOHN A. HERAUD.

Of "the pleasures of hope" much has been finely said and much more finely sung; but the prosaic and humbler side of the subject has been seldom approached, perhaps even seldom meditated. The mere faculty and power of hope, as a mental and moral constituent of the human being, implies, as even the tyro in logic may conceive, a right in man to indulge in its visions, however luxurious; but no right can exist without a co-relation to duty, as its natural precedent and necessary sequel. The practice of claiming a right without acknowledging the responsibilities involved in its possession, forms one of the general evils that equally afflict both society and individuals. Moral and political reasoners, indeed, much insist on this, and proceed at once to remind the owner of a right, that he has also consequent