Henry W. Longfellow-America's greatest poet-was born at Portland, in Maine, in 1807. He became a professor in Harvard College, Cambridge (U.S.), in 1835, where he still remains. His first volume of poems appeared in 1839, and then followed in rapid succession 'Poems on Slavery,' The Spanish Student,' 'Evangeline' (his most beautiful poem), 'The Golden Legend,' Hiawatha,' &c. His writings are very popular, both in this country and in America.

IT was the schooner 1 Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper 2 had taken his little daughter

To bear him company.

1 Schooner, a small vessel.

2 Skipper, the captain.

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,2
And to-night no moon we see!'

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

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

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;

1 Spanish main, that part of the sea near the Spanish possessions in the West Indies.

2 A ring round the moon is supposed to foretell a storm.

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; 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; what may it be?'

O say,

'Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!'

'O father! I see a gleaming light;
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 glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed That saved she might be ;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves 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 1

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 ;2

But the cruel rocks, they gored her sides
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds,3 all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board; 1
Like a vessel of glass she stove 5 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.

1 Breakers, waves dashing over rocks.

2 Carded wool. Carding is the process of cleansing wool from dirt, &c. When wool comes from the carding-room it is white and soft like the sea foam.

5 Shrouds, thick ropes supporting the masts.

4 By the board, over the side.

5 Stove, had a hole knocked into her by the rocks.

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!

THE LAST CHARGE OF THE FRENCH AT
WATERLOO.1 (SIR WALTER SCOTT.)

ON came the whirlwind-like the last
But fiercest sweep of tempest blast:
On came the whirlwind-steel-gleams broke
Like lightning through the rolling smoke;
The war was waked anew.

Three hundred cannon-mouths roared loud,
And from their throats with flash and cloud
Their showers of iron threw.

Beneath their fire, in full career,
Rushed on the ponderous cuirassier,2
The lancer couched his ruthless spear,
And hurrying as to havoc near,

The cohorts' eagles flew.3

1 Waterloo is in Belgium, near Brussels. Here Napoleon was completely defeated by the English, under the Duke of Wellington, on

18, 1815.

2 Ponderous cuirassier, French cavalry protected with a cuirass or breast-plate.

3 Cohorts' eagles, the banners of the several regiments.

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