The waters change to blood; next, frogs arise;
Dust turns to lice; and then come swarms of flies;
Lo! murrain strikes the beasts, but Goshen’s free!
Lo! boils beset the men, save, Israel, thee!
Then fires the thundering hail; then locusts bite;
Then comes three days of one unbroken night;
The first-born’s midnight death, from cot to throne,
Winds up ten plagues that make Egyptians moan.
A STORY OF LONG AGO.
The long time ago of which I mean to tell, says Jean Ingelow, was a wild night in March, during which, in a fisherman’s hut ashore, sat a young girl at her spinning-wheel, and looked out on the dark driving clouds, and listened, trembling, to the winds and the seas. The morning light dawned at last. One boat that should have been riding on the troubled waves was missing—her father’s boat! and half a mile from the cottage her father’s body was washed upon the shore.