“Through dreary beds of tangled fern,
Through groves of nightshade dark and dern,
Over the grass and through the brake,
Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake,”
till he has reached the spot appointed for the trial of his courage. He has found the treasure that he sought, protected by the warriors of the deep, and been baffled by their forces in the efforts he has made.
It is in this crisis of affairs that we meet with a deliverance as ingenious as it is successful. It is necessary, for our author’s purpose, that his hero, though thus far defeated, should yet gain his object, and with that intention he has brought him to his present situation. The events which we have compressed into the narrow space of a few lines, have been presented in detail up to the period in which the Fay, driven from his purpose, stood despairing on the river’s brink. It is thus the history continues,—
“He cast a saddened look around,
But he felt new joy his bosom swell,
When, glittering on the shadowed ground,
He saw a purple muscle shell;