The News Boy

By the Sea.

As on the lonely shore they strayed,
The scholar and the fisher maid,
Beside the melancholy sea,
They talked how this and that might be;
And, wrinkled by the ebbing tide,
The flat wet weed-strewn sands stretched far and wide.

'Twas evening, and a wistful glow
Spread where the ruddy sun hung low;
The autumn day was hasting by
And night encompassing the sky;
October's fair delightful afternoon
Sped, like a holiday that ends too soon.

"'T is strange," the scholar said, "to deem
How seldom things are what they seem!
The great sun rises not nor sets
But stays forever—like regrets."

Not so, replied the pensive fisher maiden;
The sun seeks rest, with all day's sorrows laden."

"Shall I or not," the scholar thought,
"Take to my heart this maid untaught?
Should I or should I not regret
Love's sunrise when love's sun had set?"

Aloud he said: "The sun's apparent setting
Is like the apparent passing of regretting."

The long gray wavelets murmured faint,
Like a dull, pitiful complaint;
Far out at sea a single sail
Caught the vibration of a gale.

"Nay," said the maid, "for when the stars come peeping,
Beneath the sea the wearied sun lies sleeping."

He looked down upon her, and the sun
Went down. "See, now," she said, "'t is gone!"

"But love remains," the scholar cried.
She said: "Or changes, like the tide."
And the low washing of the wanton sea
Filled the salt breeze with plaintive melody.

"Tides ebb and flow—the sea remains,
Like love, with all its joys and pains,"
He said. "Love cannot end and die
While the sun blazes in the sky.
Sweet, I entreat you lay your hand in mine:
The earth grows dark, yet still the sun doth shine."

Then the soft rippling of the tide
Like some glad, tender music sighed:
And if the sun sank down or stayed
Was nothing to the man and maid.

As, by the sea's great, careless, fickle heart,
They took each other, till death them should part.

—N. Y. Ledger.