Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/370

Rh upon me from my earliest childhood, a longing for another sphere. I knew that this earth was not my home—that here hopes and affections were to be blighted and to die. Heaven has restored us to each other; it wills that our future be eternal. A deep and a sweet repose is in my heart at this moment, and I wait, as at an altar, that fate which is not of this life."

He gazed on her large bright eyes, raised for one moment to the sky, whose light was within them. They were uplifted but for that moment, and then turned upon him; from his face they moved no more. Suddenly they were flung with violence against the side where they leant. The vessel shivered like a living thing, and planks and joints flew asunder with a sound which echoed far across the waters. One wild shriek, the cry of many voices, arose to heaven; but in vain! Again the panting waves lifted the shattered vessel on high; again it was dashed on the hidden rock;—this time it rose no more, and the last of life's agony was lost beneath the unfathomable sea!

Let the waves sweep over them! Better the dark, silent, and fated waves of ocean, than the troubled waves of life. There are some whose sojourn on this earth is brief as it is bitter. For