A Weird Scene. Dimly and slowly breaks the dawn, The dawn of a cold and drear March day ; In the city there hangs a gloomy pall Over reeking roof and blackened wall ; Over noisome slum and stately hall ; Over filthy alley and velvet lawn, In the grimy city, far away. Here, on this wild and rocky coast, A wind roars over the darkling sea ; It raves round the splintered spires of stone, Then dies away in a hollow moan In the slimy caverns wide and lone, Like the plaint of a pale and flitting ghost At its curse of Immortality. From the drifting cloud-wrack overhead Come slants of pitiless hissing rain ; Each headland frowus through the rainy gloom Like a couchant Sphinx with a face of doom, Solemn and calm through the fret and fume Of the hissing waves in their ocean bed, And the winds that buffet and rage in vain ! Something moves on that lonely shore, A shapeless shadow against the gray ; Is it a creature of the sea ? A boneless horror, whose lair may be In the caverns that yawn so gloomily ? Some loathsome monster that hates the day, And hides from the sun for evermore ? The day advances ; a wan cold light Gleams from the torn gray sky o’erhead ; Drearily strikes on the cliff’s bare steep, Dismally glances on rocks that weep With the raindrops that down their furrows creep, Or hang on their trailing growth unshed : The day is more drear than the bygone night. ’Tis a strange wild figure that grows defined, In the chilly light of the dismal morn ; A maid stood there, of dishevelled mien And lovely presence, or once had been. But now ; ah, picture the desolate scene And the wind-tost maid and her state forlorn, A broken life, and a wandering mind ! Her lover was drowned on that rock-bound coast ; Keel upwards, his boat came back from sea ; She watches and waits for his spectral form, Her figure drenched, but her love still warm ; Her dark hair rent by the raging storm. Love triumphant as Love can be : Her heart like the elements, torn and tost. E. R.