THE CONVICT SHIP.

                        By T.K. HERVEY

Morn on the waters! and purple and bright

Bursts on the billows the flashing of light;

O’er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,

See the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail—

And her pennons stream onward, like Hope, in the gale;

The waves come around her in murmur and song—

And the surges rejoice as they bear her along;

See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,

And the sailor sings gaily aloft in her shrouds;

Onward she glides amid ripple and spray,

Over the waters, away and away—

Bright as the visions of youth ere they part,

Passing away like a dream of the heart;

Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by—

Music around her and sunshine on high—

Pauses to think amid glitter and glow,

O! there be hearts that are breaking below!

Night on the waves! And the moon is on high,

Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky—

Treading its depths in the power of her might,

And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!

Look to the waters! asleep on their breast,

Seems not the ship like an island of rest,

Bright and alone on the shadowy main—

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain?

Who,—as she smiles in the silvery light,

Spreading her wings to the bosom of night,

Alone on the deep as the moon in the sky—

A phantom of beauty!—could deem with a sigh,

That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,

And souls that are smitten lie bursting within?

Who, as he watches her silently gliding,

Remembers that wave after wave is dividing

Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,

Hearts that are parted and broken forever?

Or deems that he watches afloat on the wave,

The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit’s grave!

‘Tis thus with our life as it passes along;

Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song,

Gaily we glide in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvass unfurled—

All gladness and glory to wondering eyes,

Yet charted with sorrow and freighted with sighs;

Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on just to cover out tears—

And the withering thoughts which the world cannot know.

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below—

Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore,

Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and o’er.