I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love (oh! how I love) to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the south-west blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great Sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me;
For I was born on the open Sea.
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!
I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!
B. W. Procter: ("Barry Cornwall")
LITTLE DAFFYDOWNDILLY
"I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty."
Daffydowndilly was so called because in his nature he resembled a flower, and loved to do only what was beautiful and agreeable, and took no delight in labour of any kind. But while Daffydowndilly was yet a little boy, his mother sent him away from his pleasant home, and put him under the care of a very strict schoolmaster, who went by the name of Mr. Toil. Those who knew him best affirmed that this Mr. Toil was a very worthy character; and that he had done more good, both to children and grown people, than anybody else in the world.