Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iv Part 6

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling--rejoicing--sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought!

What a clear little poem this is! From beginning to end there is scarcely a thing that needs to be explained. We can see the two pictures almost as though they had been painted for us in colors. If anything is obscure, it is the comparison of the sparks to the chaff from a thres.h.i.+ng-floor. And if that isn't clear to us it is because times have changed, and we no longer see grain threshed out on a floor.

His "limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds, smooth as our Charles!"

Longfellow uses skill in the song. He shows us the old blacksmith at his forge and draws us with the other children to see his work. We learn to love the strong old man, independent, proud and happy. We sympathize with him as he weeps and admire him so much that we delight at the lesson Longfellow so skillfully places at the end.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS

_By_ HENRY WADSWOHTH LONGFELLOW

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed the Spanish Main, "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind A gale from the Northeast; The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He Bound Her To The Mast.]

Down came the storm, and smote amain, The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale, That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring.

O say, what may it be?"

"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-- And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns.

O say, what may it be?"

"Some s.h.i.+p in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light.

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and gla.s.sy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of gla.s.s, she stove and sank, Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe!

A DOG OF FLANDERS [Footnote: This story has been abridged somewhat]

_By_ LOUISE DE LA RAMEE

Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world. They were friends in a friends.h.i.+p closer than brotherhood.

Nello was a little Ardennois; Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same age by length of years, yet one was still young and the other already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days; both were orphaned and dest.i.tute and owed their lives to the same hand.

Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little Flemish village, a league from Antwerp.

It was the hut of an old man--a poor man--of old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier and who remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down the furrows, and who had brought from his service nothing except a wound which had made him a cripple.

When Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty his daughter had died in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her two- year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello--which was but a pet diminutive for Nicholas--throve with him, and the old man and the little child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.

They were terribly poor--many a day they had nothing at all to eat.

They never by any chance had enough. To have had enough to eat would have been to have reached paradise at once. But the old man was gentle and good to the boy and the boy was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-hearted creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage and asked no more of earth or heaven, save, indeed, that Patrasche should be always with them, since without Patrasche where would they have been?

Jehan Daas was old and crippled and Nello was but a child--and Patrasche was their dog.