At night-fall, walking on the cliff-crowned shore,
When sea and sky were in each other lost,
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar,
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I mark’d one well-moor’d vessel tempest-tost;
Sails reef’d, helm lash’d, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her decks by billow after billow cross’d,
While every moment she might be no more,
Yet firmly anchor’d on the nether sand,
Like a chain’d lion ramping at his foes,
Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose,
’Till broke her cable;—then she fled to land,
With all the waves in chase; throes following throes;
She ’scaped,—she struck,—she struck upon the sand.
The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had pass’d; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o’er-arching sky.
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye;
Her bow was sea-ward, all equipt her train,
Yet to the sun she spread her wings in vain,
Like a maim’d eagle, impotent to fly,
There fix’d as if for ever to abide:
Far down the beach had roll’d the low neap-tide,
Whose mingling murmur faintly lull’d the ear,
“Is this,” methought, “is this the doom of pride,
Check’d in the outset of thy proud career,
Ingloriously to rot by piecemeal here?”
Spring-tides return’d, and fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing ocean to its breast;
While waves on waves innumerable press,
Seem’d, with the prancing of their proud array,
Sea-horses, flash’d with foam, and sporting spray:
Their power and thunder broke that vessel’s rest;
Slowly, with new-expanding life possest,
To her own element she glid away;
There, buoyant, bounding like the polar whale,
That takes his pastime, every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the world unfurl’d,
While right and left the parting surges curl’d.
—Go, gallant bark, with such a tide and gale,
I’ll pledge thee to a voyage round the world!
Montgomery.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 43·85.
[424] In vol. i. col. 1473.
[425] Perennial Calendar.