LINES ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.

BY DORCAS DOVE.

AND is it thus ye welcome Peace,

From mouths of forty-pounding Bores?
O, cease, exploding Cannons, cease!
Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!

Not so the quiet Queen should come;
But like a Nurse to still our Fears,
With shoes of List, demurely dumb,
And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!

She asks for no triumphal Arch;

No Steeples for their ropy Tongues;
Down, Drumsticks, down! She needs no March,
Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs

She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats
To tell that She is drawing nigh:
Why this Parade of scarlet Coats,
When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?

Returning to Domestic Loves,

When War has ceased with all its Ills, Captains should come like sucking Doves, With Olive Branches in their Bills.

No need there is of vulgar Shout,

Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife and Drum, And Soldiers marching all about,

To let Us know that Peace is come.

O, mild should be the Signs, and meek,
Sweet Peace's Advent to proclaim !
Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,
And Echo should repeat the same.

Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!

With Scars received on foreign Grounds;
Shall we consume in colored Glass

The Oil that should be poured in Wounds?

The bleeding Gaps of War to close,
Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?
Will Squibs enliven Orphans' Woes?
Or Crackers cheer the Widow's Tale?

THE DEMON-SHIP.

'T WAS off the Wash the sun went down - the sea looked

black and grim,

For stormy clouds with murky fleece were mustering at the

brim;

Titanic shades! enormous gloom!

as if the solid night Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light!

It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye,

With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky!

Down went my helm-close reefed the tack held freely

in my hand

With ballast snug-I put about, and scudded for the land. Loud hissed the sea beneath her lee; my little boat flew fast, But faster still the rushing storm came borne upon the blast. Lord! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining sail! What furious sleet, with level drift, and fierce assaults of

hail!

What darksome caverns yawned before! what jagged steeps behind!

Like battle-steeds, with foamy manes, wild tossing in the wind.

Each after each sank down astern, exhausted in the chase, But where it sank another rose and galloped in its place;

As black as night-they turned to white, and cast against the cloud

A snowy sheet, as if each surge upturned a sailor's shroud: Still flew my boat; alas! alas! her course was nearly run! Behold yon fatal billow rise-ten billows heaped in one! With fearful speed the dreary mass came rolling, rolling fast, As if the scooping sea contained one only wave, at last! Still on it came, with horrid roar, a swift-pursuing grave; It seemed as though some cloud had turned its hugeness to a wave!

Its briny sleet began to beat beforehand in my face

I felt the rearward keel begin to climb its swelling base!
I saw its Alpine hoary head impending over mine!
Another pulse, and down it rushed, an avalanche of brine!
Brief pause had I, on God to cry, or think of wife and home;
The waters closed- and when I shrieked, I shrieked below

the foam!

Beyond that rush I have no hint of any after deed -
For I was tossing on the waste, as senseless as a weed.

*

"Where am I? in the breathing world, or in the world of

death?"

With sharp and sudden pang I drew another birth of breath;
My eyes
drank in a doubtful light, my ears a doubtful sound,
And was that ship a real ship whose tackle seemed around?

A moon, as if the earthly moon, was shining up aloft;
But were those beams the very beams that I had seen so oft?
A face that mocked the human face before me watched alone;
But were those eyes the eyes of man that looked against
my own?

O! never may the moon again disclose me such a sight
As met my gaze, when first I looked on that accursed night!

I've seen a thousand horrid shapes begot of fierce extremes Of fever; and most frightful things have haunted in my dreams

Hyenas, cats, blood-loving bats, and apes with hateful stare, Pernicious snakes, and shaggy bulls, the lion and she-bear, Strong enemies, with Judas looks, of treachery and spiteDetested features, hardly dimmed and banished by the light! Pale-sheeted ghosts, with gory locks, upstarting from their tombs

All fantasies and images that flit in midnight glooms

Hags, goblins, demons, lemures, have made me all aghast,But nothing like that GRIMLY ONE who stood beside the

mast!

His cheek was black- his brow was black - his eyes and hair as dark:

His hand was black, and where it touched it left a sable

mark;

His throat was black, his vest the same and when I looked

beneath,

His breast was black-all, all was black, except his grinning teeth.

His sooty crew were like in hue, as black as Afric slaves! O, horror! e'en the ship was black that ploughed the inky

waves!

"Alas!" I cried, "for love of truth and blessed mercy's sake,
Where am I? in what dreadful ship? upon what dreadful lake?
What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any coal?
It is Mahound, the Evil One, and he has gained my soul!
O, mother dear! my tender nurse! dear meadows that
beguiled

My happy days, when I was yet a little sinless child,--
My mother dear native fields, I never more shall see :
I'm sailing in the Devil's Ship, upon the Devil's Sea!"

my

Loud laughed that SABLE MARINER, and loudly in return His sooty crew sent forth a laugh that rang from stem to

A dozen pair of grimly cheeks were crumpled on the nonce ---
As many sets of grinning teeth came shining out at once:
A dozen gloomy shapes at once enjoyed the merry fit,
With shriek and yell, and oaths as well, like demons of the Pit.
They crowed their fill, and then the Chief made answer for
the whole; -

"Our skins," said he, "are black, ye see, because we carry

coal;

You'll find your mother sure enough, and see your native

"Ham. The air bites shrewdly it is very cold.

Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air."- HAMLET,

"COME, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness, come!"
O! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum?
There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing,

And be her tuneful laureates and upholders.

Who do not feel as if they had a Spring

Poured down their shoulders!