* * * * *

NOTE.—­Here ends the tale, but by patient research we have discovered one verse of an ancient ballad, supposed to have the same tradition for its subject.  It is preserved in a curious collection of fragmentary poetry, to be found in most private libraries, and, in its more ancient and valuable editions, in the repositories of antiquaries.  It stands, in the modern copy which we possess, as follows:—­

  Richard and Robert were two pretty men;
  Both laid abed till the clock struck ten. 
  Up jumps Robert, and looks at the sky;
  “Oho, brother Richard, the sun’s very high! 
  You go before, with the bottle and bag,
  And I’ll come behind, on little Jack nag.”

THE SEA.

    “We sent him to school, we set him to learn a trade, we sent
     him far back into the country; but it was of no use, he must
     go to sea.”—­THE GRANDMOTHER’S STORY.

  A child was ever haunted by a thought of mystery,
  Of the dark, shoreless, desolate, heaving and moaning sea,
  Which round about the cold, still earth goes drifting to and fro,
  As a mother, holding her dead child, swayeth herself with woe. 
  In all the jar and bustle and hurrying of trade,
  Through the hoarse, distracting din by rattling pavements made,
  There sounded ever in his ear a low and solemn moan,
  And his soul grew sick with listening to that deep undertone. 
  He wandered from the busy streets, he wandered far away,
  To where the dim old forest stands, and in its shadows lay,
  And listened to the song it sang; but its murmurs seemed to be
  The whispered echo of the sad, sweet warbling of the sea. 
  His soul grew sick with longing, and shadowy and dim
  Seemed all the beauty of the land, and all its joys, to him,—­
  Its mountains vast, its forests old.  He only longed to be
  Away upon the measureless, unfathomed, restless sea. 
  Thither he went.  The foam-capped waves yet beat upon the strand,
  With a low and solemn murmuring that none may understand;
  And he lieth drifting to and fro, amid the ocean’s roar,
  With the drifting tide he loved to hear, but shall hear never more.

    And thus we all are haunted,—­there soundeth in our ear,
  A low and restless moaning, that we struggle not to hear. 
  Yet still it soundeth, the faint cry of the dark deeps of the soul,—­
  Dark, barren, restless, as the sea which doth for ever roll
  Hither and thither, bearing still some half-shaped form of good,
  The flickering shadow of the moon upon the “moon-led flood.” 
  And ever, ’mid all the joys and weary cares of life,
  Through the dull sleep of sluggishness, and clangor of the strife,
  We hear the low, deep murmuring of that Infinity
  Which stretcheth round us dim and vast, as wraps the earth the sea.