Wyseby

OP THE FIRST IHVINGS. 27
'Twas evening. Edith sat alone on Barra's bleak
promontory, high — high — high, far up amid the
clouds; — and before her, away — away — away, the
sea leaped, and foamed, and raged, and rioted ; loud
shouting as a billow, shattered to spray, leaped into
the air, — then lying writhing, and shrieking, and
groaning in a horrid, unquiet calm ; then again, as
if some new torture was applied, bursting into wild
agonised life. She sat there. In the morning she
came. Weary, weary hours had passed away, and she
sat there still, watching the unstable element under-
going its mystic torture. The sun came up from
the east with his many winds. She saw him come.
He stood in the centre of the heavens, shedding
cold, piercing cold rays on the shivering earth. She
saw him there. He went down rushing- into the sea,
and she saw him, as a monarch abdicating, go down.
Then the stars came out one by one, the winds swept
across their pale faces, and they looked sad as child-
ren of men in the hour of adversity. Ah ! she has
watched long. The dews of night gather 'mid her
black locks, and the dimness of weariness rests upon
her eyes — star-bright they usually are, with the sad-
ness of the stars to the watching- soul in their gaze.
Now her eyes pierce deep into night. She springs
to her feet ; shouts joyfully. How strange and
unearthly that shout peals, and how hoarsely the
deep sea replies ! She shouts again. Ha ! she sees
a sail; there — there, rising above the mountains of
waters ; but away, far, far away, touching the rim of
the horizon. The stars are dancing amid its ropes.
How the waves must be shrieking there ! — how they
must be leaping up the groaning sides of that vessel !
—-and how the spirit of the nether depths must be