“The gale had grown into a tempest now:
The vessel fled before it. On the prow
Martial was kneeling, and Saturnius:
While, in his mantle folded, Trophimus
The aged saint silently meditated;
And Maximin the bishop near him waited.
“High on the main-deck Lazarus held his place.
There was an awful pallor on his face,—
Hues of the winding-sheet and of the grave.
He seemed to face the anger of the wave.
Martha his sister to his side had crept,
And Magdalene behind them cowered and wept.
“The slender bark, pursued of demons thus,
Contained, beside, Cléon, Eutropius,
Marcellus, Joseph of Arimathea,
Sidonius. And sweet it was to hear
The psalms they sang on the blue waste of sea,
Leaned o’er the tholes. Te Deum, too, said we.
“How rushed the boat the sparkling billows by!
E’en yet that sea seems present to the eye.
The breeze, careering, on the waters hurled,
Whereby the snowy spray was tossed and whirled,
And lifted in light wreaths into the air,
That soared like souls aloft, and vanished there.
“Out of the waves at morning rose the Sun,
And set therein when his day’s course was run.
Mere waifs were we upon the briny plain,
The sport of all the winds that scour the main;
Yet of our God withheld from all mischance,
That we might bear His gospel to Provence.
“At last there came a morning still and bright.
We noted how, with lamp in hand, the night
Most like an anxious widow from us fled,
Risen betimes to turn her household bread
Within the oven. Ocean seemed as napping,
The languid waves the boatside barely tapping.
‘Till a dull, bellowing noise assailed the ear.
Unknown before, it chilled our blood to hear.
And next we marked a strange, upheaving motion
Upon the utmost limit of the ocean,
And, stricken speechless by the gathering roar,
Helplessly gazed the troubled waters o’er.
“Then saw we all the deep with horror lower,
As the swift squall descended in its power;
The waves drop dead still,—’twas a portent fell;
The bark hang motionless, as by a spell
Entranced; and far away, against the skies,
A mountain of black water seemed to rise,
“And all the heaped-up sea, with vapour crested,
To burst upon our vessel, thus arrested.
God, ’twas an awful hour! One monster wave
Seemed thrusting us into a watery grave,
Fainting to death. Or ever it closed o’er us,
The next upon a dizzy height upbore us.
“The lightning cleft the gloom with blades of fire;
Peal followed peal of thunder, deafening, dire.
It was as if all hell had been unchained
Upon our tiny craft, which groaned and strained
So hunted, and seemed rushing on her wreck,
And smote our foreheads with her heaving deck.