THE MARINER'S SONG OF DEPARTURE.

While o'er the bright bay,

With her streamers at play,

Our bark in her beauty is gliding,

As brothers, are we,

The glad sons of the sea,

Our own darling element riding.

Good pilot, adieu;

For the skies are all blue;

And yonder, blue billows are bounding.

We speed from the port,

To be off by the fort,

While her gun to the sunrise is sounding.

We leave all behind,

That a warm heart can bind,

In home, love, and friendship endearing;

While hope flies before,

For a far, foreign shore,

As the hand at the rudder is steering.

And well do we know

The proud waters below,

That hence are by us to be ridden;

‘ Mid the corals and caves

There are mariners’ graves,

Dark wrecks, and lost treasures deep hidden.

Yet, before our frail bark,

Be the way light or dark,

Our Sun, and the Star that we follow,

Is He, who unbinds

Or enchains the strong winds;

Whose hand holds the seas in its hollow.

If o'er the bright skies

The wild storm-spirit rise,

And spread his black wings full of thunder,

Our canvass we‘ ll reef,

Or heave-to for relief,

And safely his pinions pass under.

And so,‘ mid the strife

On the flood-waves of life,

To Heaven in our ark lowly bending

For help would we cry,

Till the dove, from on high,

Appears with the peace-branch descending.

Thus, we've friend, love, and home,

Wheresoe'er we may roam

The wide seas, from pole to equator —

We‘ ve a light, and high-tower,

In the name and the power

Of him, who is ocean's Creator.