Wet was the grass beneath our tread, Thick-dewed the bramble by the way; The lichen had a lovelier red,

The elder-flower a fairer gray.

And there was silence on the land,
Save when, from out the city's fold,
Stricken by Time's remorseless wand,
A bell across the morning tolled.

The beeches sighed through all their boughs;

The gusty pennons of the pine
Swayed in a melancholy drowse,
But with a motion sternly fine.

One gable, full against the sun,
Flooded the garden-space beneath
With spices, sweet as cinnamon,

From all its honeysuckled breath.

Then crew the cocks from echoing farms, The chimney-tops were plumed with smoke,

The windmill shook its slanted arms,
The sun was up, the country woke!
And voices sounded mid the trees

Of orchards red with burning leaves, By thick hives, sentinelled by bees, From fields which promised tented sheaves;

Till the day waxed into excess,

And on the misty, rounding gray, One vast, fantastic wilderness,

The glowing roofs of London lay.

UNKNOWN.

THE FISHERMAN'S SUMMONS.

THE sea is calling, calling.
Wife, is there a log to spare?
Fling it down on the hearth and call
them in,

The boys and girls with their merry din,
I am loth to leave you all just yet,
In the light and the noise I might forget,
The voice in the evening air.

The sea is calling, calling,

Along the hollow shore.

I know each nook in the rocky strand,

And the worn old cliff where the seapinks cling,

And the winding caves where the echoes ring.

I shall wake them nevermore.
How it keeps calling, calling,
It is never a night to sail.

I saw the "sea-dog" over the height,
As I strained through the haze my fail-
ing sight,

And the cottage creaks and rocks, wellnigh,

As the old "Fox" did in the days gone by, In the moan of the rising gale.

Yet it is calling, calling.
It is hard on a soul, I say,

To go fluttering out in the cold and the dark,

Like the bird they tell us of, from the ark; While the foam flies thick on the bitter

blast,

And the angry waves roll fierce and fast, Where the black buoy marks the bay.

Do you hear it calling, calling?
And yet, I am none so old.
At the herring fishery, but last year,
No boat beat mine for tackle and gear,
And I steered the coble past the reef,
When the broad sail shook like a with-
ered leaf,

And the rudder chafed my hold.

Will it never stop calling, calling?
Can't you sing a song by the hearth?
A heartsome stave of a merry glass,
Or a gallant fight, or a bonnie lass?
Don't you care for your grand-dad just
so much?

Come near then, give me a hand to touch,
Still warm with the warmth of earth.

You hear it calling, calling?
Ask her why she sits and cries.
She always did when the sea was up,
She would fret, and never take bit or sup
When I and the lads were out at night,
And she saw the breakers cresting white
Beneath the low black skies.

But, then, it is calling, calling,
No summons to soul was sent.

Now

Well, fetch the parson, find the book,