FUNERAL AT SEA.
"Yesterday, a child died in the ship. To-day, I read the English burial-service,—and committed its body to the mighty deep, until the day when the grave and sea shall give up their dead. The mother lay in tears in her berth,—the father could scarce repress his anguish, and I felt the agony of their grief, as I pronounced the solemn words, that accompanied the body to the pathless deep."
Journal of the late Rev. Henry B. McLellan.
The deep sea took the dead. It was a babe
Like sculptur'd marble, pure and beautiful
That lonely to its yawning gulphs went down.
—Poor cradled nursling,—no fond arm was there
To wrap thee in its folds; no lullaby
Came from the green sea-monster, as he laid
His shapeless head thy polished brow beside,
One moment wondering at the beauteous spoil
On which he fed. Old Ocean heeded not
This added unit to his myriad dead.
But in the bosom of the tossing ship
Rose up a burst of anguish, wild and loud,
From the vex'd fountain of a mother's love.
—The lost! The lost! Oft shall her startled dream,
Catch the drear echo of the sullen plunge
That whelm'd the uncoffin'd body,—oft her eye
Strain wide through midnight's long unslumbering watch,
Remembering how his soft sweet breathing seem'd
Like measur'd music in a lilly's cup,
And how his tiny shout of rapture swelled,
When closer to her bosom's core, she drew
His eager lip.
Who thus, with folded arms,
And head declin'd, doth seem to count the waves,
