Page 133 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

Dying where leagues of billows sewned 1o shriek far their prey,
And the nearest laud was hundreds— av, thousands-— o f miies away,
She raved one nil:, hl in a fever, and the next lay still as death,
So still I'd bend to listen for the faintest sign o f breath.

She seemed in a sleep, and sleeping with a smile on her thin, wan

She passed away one morning, while T prayed to the throne o f grace,
T knelt in the liltlo cabin, and prayer after prayer I -Said,
"1 ill the surgeon come and told me it was useless— my wife was dead !

Dead ! I wouldn't believe it, T h ey forced me away that night.
For 1 raved in my wild despairing, the shock sent me mad outright.
I rvas shut in the farthest cabin, and I beat my head on the side,
A n d all day long m my madness, “ They've murdered her !'* I cried,

T h ey locked me away from m y fellows,-— put me in cruel chains,
It seems I had seised a weapon to beat out the surgeon's brains.
I cried in niv wild, triad furv that he was the devil sent
T o gloat o'er the frenized anguish with winch my heart, was rent,

T spent that night, with toe irons heavy upon niy wrists.
A n d my wife lay dead quite near ms, I beat with my fettered fists,
Beat at m y prison panels, and then— O God !— and then
I heard the shrieks o f women and the tramp of hurrying men.

I heard the cry, 11 Ship a-fire T caught up by a hundred throats,
A n d over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats ;
Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood,
A nd the place grew hot as a furnace— 1 could feel it where I stood.

T beat at the door and shouted, but never a sound came back,
A n d the timbers above me started, till right through a yawning crack
I could see the flames shoot upwards, seizing on mast and sad,
banned in their burning fury by the breaJi o f the lunv’ing gale.