One little hut among de bushes,
      One dat I love,
    Still sadly to my memory rushes,
      No matter where I rove. 
    When will I see de bees a-humming
      All round de comb? 
    When will I hear de banjo tumming,
      Down in my good old home?

        All de world am sad and dreary,
          Eberywhere I roam;
        Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
          Far from de old folks at home!

STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.

 THE WRECK OF THE “HESPERUS.”

“The Wreck of the Hesperus,” by Longfellow (1807-82), on “Norman’s
 Woe,” off the coast near Cape Ann, is a historic poem as well as an imaginative composition.

    It was the schooner Hesperus,
      That sailed the wintry sea;
    And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
      To bear him company.

    Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
      Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
    And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
      That ope in the month of May.

    The skipper he stood beside the helm,
      His pipe was in his mouth,
    And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
      The smoke now west, now south.

    Then up and spake an old sailor,
      Had sailed the Spanish Main,
   “I pray thee put into yonder port,
      For I fear a hurricane.

   “Last night the moon had a golden ring,
      And to-night no moon we see!”
    The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
      And a scornful laugh laughed he.

    Colder and louder blew the wind,
      A gale from the northeast,
    The snow fell hissing in the brine,
      And the billows frothed like yeast.

    Down came the storm, and smote amain
      The vessel in its strength;
    She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
      Then leaped her cable’s length.

   “Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
      And do not tremble so;
    For I can weather the roughest gale
      That ever wind did blow.”

    He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
      Against the stinging blast;
    He cut a rope from a broken spar,
      And bound her to the mast.

   “O father!  I hear the church-bells ring,
      O say, what may it be?”
   “Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”—­
      And he steered for the open sea.

   “O father!  I hear the sound of guns,
      O say, what may it be?”
   “Some ship in distress, that cannot live
      In such an angry sea!”

   “O father!  I see a gleaming light,
      O say, what may it be?”
    But the father answered never a word,
      A frozen corpse was he.

    Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
      With his face turned to the skies,
    The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
      On his fixed and glassy eyes.