She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,

And I—I hear the sea-voice calling me.

Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,

Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.

[Pg 76]

Old Ocean holds his court around you there,

His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.

The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,

To face the shuddering agony of day

She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;

And I—I hear the sea-voice calling me.

[Pg 77]

[Pg 77]

The Mystery of Randolph’s Courtship

It is said that in order to know a man, one must begin with his ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified in the case of “John Randolph of Roanoke,” as he loved to write his name.

I

His contemporaries have told us what manner of man he was—fiery, excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.

“I have been all my life,” he says, “the creature of impulse, the sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable sensations, and of a poetic temperament.”

He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of Byronic [Pg 78]despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back to the Norman Conquest from which he 

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