On a summer's day while the waves were rippling, with a quiet and a gentle breeze;
A ship set sail with a cargo laden for a port beyond the sea.

Did she ever return? No, she never returned, and her fate is still unlearned,
But a last poor man set sail commander, on a ship that never returned.

There were sad farewells, there were friends forsaken, and her fate is still unlearned,
But a last poor man set sail commander on a ship that never returned.

Did she ever return? No, she never returned, and her fate is still unlearned,

ALL under the leaves and the leaves of life
   I met with virgins seven,
And one of them was Mary mild,
   Our Lord's mother of Heaven.

'O what are you seeking, you seven fair maids,
   All under the leaves of life?
Come tell, come tell, what seek you
   All under the leaves of life?'

'We're seeking for no leaves, Thomas,
   But for a friend of thine;
We're seeking for sweet Jesus Christ,
   To be our guide and thine.'

Or, The Solitude Of Binnorie

SEVEN Daughter had Lord Archibald,
All children of one mother:
You could not say in one short day
What love they bore each other.
A garland, of seven lilies, wrought!
Seven sisters that together dwell;
But he, bold Knight as ever fought,
Their Father, took of them no thought,
He loved the wars so well.
Sing, mournfully, oh! mournfully,
The solitude of Binnorie!

Fresh blows the wind, a western wind,
And from the shores of Erin,
Across the wave, a Rover brave

The seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven
For wronging him,--and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights.
Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory ! heaven is high;
Sing, poet with the sorrow ! earth is low:
The universe's inward voices cry
' Amen ' to either song of joy and woe:

Into the world you sent her, mother,
Fashioned her body of coral and foam,
Combed a wave in her hair's warm smother,
And drove her away from home

In the dark of the night she crept to the town
And under a doorway she laid her down,
The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown.

And never a sister and never a brother
To hear her call, to answer her cry.
Her face shone out from her hair's warm smother
Like a moonkin up in the sky.

She sold her corals; she sold her foam;
Her rainbow heart like a singing shell

HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink
Where every eye but his own would shrink;
No music he hears but the billow’s noise,
And shells and weeds are his only toys.
No lullaby can the mother find
To sing him to rest like the moaning wind;
And the louder it wails and the fiercer it sweeps,
The deeper he breathes and the sounder he sleeps.

And now his wandering feet can reach
The rugged tracks of the desolate beach;
Creeping about like a Triton imp,
To find the haunts of the crab and shrimp.

The sea, my mother, is singing to me,
   She is singing the old refrain,
Of passion, of love, and of mystery,
   And her world-old song of pain;
Of the mirk midnight and the dazzling day,
That trail their robes o'er the wet sea-way.

The sea, my mother, is singing to me
   With the white foam caught in her hair,
With the seaweed swinging its long arms free,
   To grapple the blown sea air:
The sea, my mother, with billowy swell,

THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

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, O, how I love to ride

Because I've come to eighty odd,
I must prepare to meet you, God.
What should I do? I cannot pray,
I have no pious words to say;
And though the Bible I might read,
Scriptures don't meet my need.

Please tell me God what can I do
To be acceptable to you?
I've put in order my affairs,
And left their portion to my heirs;
And what remains I've willed to be
A gift to Charity.

What must I do? I cannot kneel,
Although a sense of you I feel,
I will not show a coward's fear,

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!

But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy