The breakers 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,

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

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

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!

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Bannockburn.

ROBERT BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY.

You can look down on the battle-field of Bannockburn from Stirling Castle, Scotland, near which stands a magnificent statue of Robert, the Bruce. How often have I trodden over the old battle-field! The monument of William Wallace, too, looms up on the Ochil Hills, not far away. (1759-96.)

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie.

Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lower;

See approach proud Edward's power-
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's King and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa'?
Let him follow me!

By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do, or die!

ROBERT BURNS.

PART IV.

Lad and Lassie

PART IV

The Inchcape Rock.

The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings low. "The Inchcape Rock" is a thrust at hard-heartedness. "What is the use of life?" To bear one another's burdens, to develop a genius for pulling people through hard places-that's the use of life. It is the last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers on life's sea. (1774-1843.)

No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
The ship was still as she could be;

Her sails from heaven received no motion;
Her keel was steady in the ocean.

Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell,

They did not move the Inchcape Bell.

The Abbot of Aberbrothok

Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.

When the Rock was hid by the surge's swell,
The mariners heard the warning Bell;
And then they knew the perilous Rock,
And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok.

The sun in heaven was shining gay;

All things were joyful on that day;

The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round, And there was joyance in their sound.