I said: “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!”

She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;

“Long prayers”, I said, “in the world they say;

Come”, I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-walled town;

Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,

To the little grey church on the windy hill.

From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:

“Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!

Dear heart”, I said, “we are long alone;

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan”.

But, ah, she gave me never a look,

For her eyes we sealed to the holy book!

Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.

Come away, children, call no more!

Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark, what she sings: “O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy!

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun!”

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the shuttle drops from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,

From a sorrow-clouded eye,

And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away children;

Come children, come down!

The hoarse wind blows coldly;

Lights shine in the town.

She will start from her slumber

When gusts shake the door;

She will hear the winds howling,

Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us

The waves roar and whirl,

A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl,

Singing: “Here came a mortal,

But faithless was she!

And alone dwell for ever

The kings of the sea”.

But, children, at midnight,

When soft the winds blow,

When clear fall the moonlight,

When spring-tides are low;

When sweet airs come seaward

From heaths starred with broom,

And high rocks throw mildly

On the blanched sands a gloom;

Up the still, glistening beaches,

Up the creeks we will hie,

Over banks of bright seaweed

The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white sleeping town;

At the church on the hillside —

And then come back down.

Singing: “There dwells a loved one,

But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever

The kings of the sea”.

East London

’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead

Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,

And the pale weaver, through his windows seen

In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

“Ill and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene?” —

“Bravely!” said he; “for I of late have been

Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread”.

O human soul! as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam —

Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!

Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.

West London

Crouch’d on the pavement close by Belgrave Square

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;