His life
Was given to toil, his strength to perilous blasts.
In freezing floods when tempests hurled the deep,
And battling winds clashed in their icy caves,
Scared housewives, waking, thought of him, and said,
"'The Stormy Petrel' is abroad to-night,
And watches from the cliffs."
He could not rest
When shipwrecked forms might gasp amid the waves,
And not a cry be answered from the shore.
Now Heaven has quenched his sight; but when he hears
By his lone hearth the sullen sea-winds clang,
Or listens, in the mad, wild, drowning night,
As younger footsteps hurry o'er the beach
To pluck the sailor from his sharp-fanged death,--
The old man starts, with generous impulse thrilled,
And, with the natural habit of his heart,
Calls to his neighbors in a cheery tone,
Tells them he'll pilot toward the signal guns,
And then, remembering all his weight of years,
Sinks on his couch, and weeps that he is blind.
A STORY OF TO-DAY.
Margaret stood looking down in her quiet way at the sloping moors and
fog. She, too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it
clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily
down the wide years opening before her.
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