is purely lyric and expressive of her own feeling in remembrance of the danger.
The climax of the dramatic movement of the story comes in the intense realization of the personal danger to herself and her son when they saw the mighty tidal wave rolling up the river Lindis, which
“Sobbed in the grasses at our feet:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee.”
Then the poet does not mention the son’s efforts in her behalf, the flight to the roof of their dwelling in the midst of the waves, and makes a sudden transition again from the dramatic situation to the lyric spirit as she moans with no thought of herself:
“And all the world was in the sea.”
Another sudden transition in the poem is indicated by a mere dash after “And I—” Starting to relate her own experience with a loving mother’s instinct she turns instead to the grief of her son,—
“... my sonne was at my side,
And yet he moaned beneath his breath.”
This is followed by another passionate dramatic climax,—
“And didst thou visit him no more?
Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare,
The waters laid thee at his doore,
Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
The lifted sun shone on thy face,
Down drifted to thy dwelling-place.”
Here feeling is deepest in the speaker, and in the listener, and, of course, in the reader. The rest of the poem is a sweet and mournful lyric: