OW slow yon lonely vessel ploughs the main!
Amid the heavy billows now she seems
A toiling atom: then from wave to wave
Leaps madly, by the tempest lashed, or reels
Half wrecked through gulfs profound. Moons wax and wane, But still that patient traveller treads the deep.
-I see an icebound coast toward which she steers
With such a tardy movement, that it seems
Stern Winter's hand hath turned her keel to stone,
And sealed his victory on her slippery shrouds.
-They land! they land! not like the Genoese,
With glittering sword, and gaudy train, and eye
Kindling with golden fancies. Forth they come
From their long prison, hardy forms that brave
The world's unkindness, men of hoary hair,
Maidens of fearless heart, and matrons grave,
Who hush the wailing infant with a glance.
Bleak Nature's desolation wraps them round,-
Eternal forests, and unyielding earth,
And savage men, who through the thickets peer
With vengeful arrow.
What could lure their steps
Ask of him who left
His father's home to roam through Haran's wilds,
Distrusting not the guide who called him forth,
Nor doubting, though a stranger, that his seed
Should be as ocean's sands. But yon lone bark
Hath spread her parting sail; they crowd the strand,
Those few, lone pilgrims. Can ye scan the woe
That wrings their bosoms, as the last frail link,
Binding to man and habitable earth,
Is severed? Can ye tell what pangs were there,
With keen regrets; what sickness of the heart;
What yearnings o'er their forfeit land of birth,
Their distant dear ones? Long, with straining eye,
They watch the lessening speck.
Heard ye no shriek Of anguish, when that bitter loneliness
Sank down into their bosoms? No! they turn
Back to their dreary, famished huts, and pray!
Pray, and the ills that haunt this transient life
Fade into air. Up in each girded breast
There sprang a rooted and mysterious strength,-
A loftiness to face a world in arms,
To strip the pomp from sceptres,
On Duty's sacred altar the warm blood
Of slain affections, should they rise between
The soul and GOD. O ye, who proudly boast
your free veins the blood of sires like these, Look to their lineaments. Dread lest ye lose
Their likeness in your sons.
Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart, or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth Rock, and where they knelt
Kneel, and renew the vow they breathed to God.
LOW on, forever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty! Yea, flow on,
Unfathomed and resistless! God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him
Eternally-bidding the lip of man
Keep silence and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise. Ah! who can dare
To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep. like a spent labourer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,
Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
When first they sang o'er young Creation's birth,
Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires,
That wait the archangel's signal to dissolve
This solid earth, shall find JEHOVAH's name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
Of thine unending volume. Every leaf,
That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon birds
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing
To touch thy garment's hem, and lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapour wreath,
For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof.
Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil's point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,
Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul
A wondering witness of thy majesty ;
But as it presses with delirious joy
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And tame its rapture, with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.
OIL on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,
Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,
With your sand-based structures and domes of rock:
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,
And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear
A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.
Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;
Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,
And the mountains exult where the wave hath been.
But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison-drop in man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle-breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?
With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of Ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee;
Hath Earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless Sea for the thronging dead?
Ye build-ye build—but ye enter not in,
Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin;
From the land of promise ye fade and die,
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;
As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid,
Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main,
While the wonder and pride of your works remain.
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