These strike and rend the reeling sides below;26
Those grappling clamber up and load the decks,
With looks of wrath so human on the foe,
They seem to horror like the mangled wrecks
Of what were men in worlds before the Ark!
Thus raged the immane and monster war—when, hark,
Crash'd through the dreary air a thunder peal!27
In their slow courses meet two ice-rock isles
Clanging; the wide seas far-resounding reel;
The toppling ruin rolls in the defiles;
The pent tides quicken with the headlong shock:
Broad-billowing heave the long waves from the rock;
Far down the booming vales precipitous28
Plunges the stricken galley,—as a steed
Smit by the shaft runs reinless,—o'er the prows
Howl the lash'd surges; Man and monster freed
By power more awful from the savage fray,
Here roaring sink—there dumbly whirl away.
The water runs in maëlstroms;—as a reed29
Spins in an eddy and then skirs along,—
Dragg'd round and round, emerged and vanishèd
The mighty ship amidst the mightier throng
Of the revolving hell. With abrupt spring
Bounding at last—on it shot maddening.
Behind it, thunderous swept the glacier masses,30
Shivering and splintering, hurtling each on each:
Narrower and narrower press the frowning passes:—
Jamm'd in the farthest gorge the bark may reach,
Where the grim Scylla rocks the direful way,
The fierce Charybdis flings her mangled prey.
As if a living thing, in every part31
The vessel groans—and with a dismal chime
Cracks to the cracking ice; asunder start
The brazen ribs:—and clogg'd and freezing, climb
Through cleft and chink, as through their native caves,
The gelid armies of the hardening waves.
One sigh whose lofty pity did embrace32
The vanish'd many, the surviving few,
The Cymrian gave—then with a cheering face
He spoke, and breathed his soul into the crew:
"Ye whom the haught desire of Fame, whose air
Is storm, and tales of what your fathers were,
"What time their valour wrought such deeds below33
As made the valiant lift them to the gods,
Impell'd with me to spare all meaner foe,
And vanquish'd Nature in the fiend's abodes;—
Droop not nor faint!—Reserved, perchance, to give
Themes to such song as bids your Odin live:—
"A voice from those now gone in darkness down,34
Bids us endure!—Of all they ask'd in life
Our death would rob their lofty shades—Renown!
The wave hath pluck'd us from the monster strife,
Lo where the icebay frees us from the wave,
And yields a port in what we deem'd a grave!
"Up and at work all hands to lash the bark35
With grappling-hook, and cord, and iron band
To yon firm peak, the Ararat of our ark,
Then with good heart pierce to the vapour-land;
For the crane's scream, and the bear's welcome roar
Tell where the wave joins solid to the shore."