OFF PROVINCETOWN.

THE winter wind smites angrily

The palm of the gray sea;

The foam drives white across the beach, -

The clouds as black can be!

The sun drops suddenly downward thro'

A lane of purple mist;

The clouds hang low; the waves run high;

And sea and sky have kist.

The wind is wroth, and madly hurls

The blinding volleys of spray

Westward, shoreward, growing louder

To the close o' the sombre day.

The long Cape groans and shudders

At the fierce blows of the storm;

But the village windows are lighted,

And the village hearths are warm.

Near and nearer drives the ship

To the sands of Provincetown;

And pitiful faces glimmer ashore,

And a-sea the sailors drown.

A cry for help i' the darkness

When help could never be;

A voice that rings thro' tempest crash

From the lips of Italy;

Despair, that knows not tongue nor tribe,

Is the interpreter;

The women wring their hands; the men

Look and cannot stir.

The life-lines meet no answering touch

But the fingers of the foam;

The dying eyes see thro' the sleet

The lights of the stranger's home.

. . . Stark and white in the dull dawn

They lie upon the shore,

Who, thro' the storm or thro' the sun,

Shall see their homes no more -

No more the sunny bay they lov'd,

That basks at Naples' feet:

Bitter the death-ways are to tread,

Tho' death itself be sweet!

. . . At evening in the village church

Men walkt with tender tread,

And the voice of the preacher trembled, when

He pray'd for the unknown dead.

And over the icy ocean,

Hundreds of miles away,

There were voices that brake in sobs that night

When they knelt - and tried to pray!