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 THE

SHIPWRECK
A POEM.

BY WILLIAM FALCONER.

WITH LIFE BY ROBERT CARRUTHERS.

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LONDON:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW;
EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK.

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 Contents.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,

MEMOIR OF FALCONER,

THE SHIPWRECK-

INTRODUCTION, 37

CANTO FIRST, 43

CANTO SECOND,

CANTO THIRD, 125

OCCASIONAL ELEGY, 166

 Yx%i 0f Illustrations
DESIGNED BY BIRKET FOSTER.
ENGRAVED BY EDMUND EVANS, DALZIEL BROTHERS, AND W. T. GREEN.

INTRODUCTION.
Engraved by Page
'
'Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar.
That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore,
Far other themes of deep distress to sing.".. . .W. T. Green 37

CANTO FIRST.
" A ship from Egypt, o'er the deep impelled
By guiding winds, her course for Venice held." Edmund Evans .... 45

" Gay Venice." Edmund Evans.. .. 47

" Four days becalmed the vessel here remains,

And yet no hopes of aiding wind obtains.'' . . . W. T. Green. 49

'
Oft in the mazes of a neighbouring grove
Unheard they breathed alternate vows of love." , . Dalziel Bros 55

" Where full in view Augusta's spires are seen,

With flowery lawns and waving woods between,
A peaceful dwelling stands in modest pride. " W. T. Green 61

" Full oft, where Thames his wandering current leads,

We roved at evening hour through flowery meads." Dalziel Bros 63

" She to her silent couch retired to weep." W. T. Green 69

viu LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS.
Engraved by page
" Whilst I embarked, in sadness, on the deep." Edmund Evans.. .. 70

" And lo ! his surface lovely to behold

Glows in the west, a sea of living gold !" Edmund Evans, ... 72
/

" The lunar rays in long reflection gleam,

With silver deluging the fluid stream." W. T. Green 75

" The natives, while the ship departs their land,

Ashore with admiration gazing stand." W. T. Green 77

CANTO SECOND.
" The watery volume trembling to the sky,
Burst down, a dreadful deluge from on high " !
Edmund Evans 83

" Deep, on her side, the reeling vessel lies." Edmund Evans. ... 90

" His race performed, the sacred lamp of day

Now dipt in western clouds his parting ray." Edmund Evans .... 95

" Down the vessel lies

Half buried sideways ; while, beneath it tost,

Four seamen off the lee yard-arm are lost. " W. T. Green 99

" Cimmerian darkness shades the deep around,

Save when the lightnings in terrific blaze

Deluge the cheerless gloom with horrid rays." Dalziel Bros 107

" With him the pilots, of their hopeless state

In mournful consultation now debate." Dalziel Bros no

" Deep gashed beneath, the tottering structure rings,

And crashing, thundering, o'er the quarter swings." Dalziel Bros 123

CANTO THIRD.
" Now quivering o'er the topmost wave she rides." Dalziel Bros 127

11
High o'er its summit, through the gloom of night,
The glimmering watch-tower cast a mournful light." Dalziel Bros 132

" Immortal Athens first, in ruin spread,

Contiguous lies at Port Liono's head." Edmund Evans.. .. 135
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. IX

Engraved by Page
" Next in the Gulf of Engia, Corinth lies." Edmund Evans.. .. 136

" Argos, in Greece forgotten and unknown,

Still seems her cruel fortune to bemoan." Edmund Evans .... 139

" Contiguous here, with hallowed woods o'erspread,

Parnassus lifts to heaven its honoured head." Edmund Evans.. .. 143

" Full in her van Saint George's cliffs arise ;

High o'er the rest a pointed crag is seen,

That hung projecting o'er a mossy green." Dalziel Bros 147

" And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high." Dalziel Bros 150

" As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung,

Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung." Edmund Evans 135

" Five only left of all the shipwrecked throng

Yet ride the mast which shoreward drives along." Edmund Evans .... 157

" With dumb amazement pale, Arion gazed." Dalziel Bros 161

TJie Vignettes and Initial Letters designed by Noel Humphreys,

and engraved by H. N. Woods.

>Al!i . i
 —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

|HAT genius will vindicate its celestial origin, and burst through
all obstructions, is an axiom illustrated by many splendid and
interesting examples. The energies of an original creative mind
and bold imagination can never be wholly repressed or obscured
by circumstances the cloud : that carries the electric fire conceals

it but for a time, and its manifestations appear all the brighter
from the previous gloom. In the list of eminent self-taught men who have
shed lustre on our imaginative literature, a high rank must be assigned to
the poet of the Shipwreck. No distinguished author ever rose from a lower
level, or had to contend with more depressing difficulties. His early years
were doomed to hardship, disappointment, and misery; and his situation as

a common seaman — "a ship-boy on the high and giddy mast" —precluded
nearly all opportunities of literary study or advancement, until after long
years of severe and irksome toil. In this respect he stands alone in our
annals. Burns, Gifford, Bloomfield, or Hogg, had no such hard ascent to
climb. The shepherd on his hill and the rustic at his plough have each a
certain range of natural freedom, and chances of intellectual companionship
and enjoyment. The mechanic also has his hours of leisure and access to

books. None of them are debarred the supreme luxury and elevating influ-
ences of Sabbath rest, summer walks, and female society. But the young
apprenticed seaman is restricted to one set of associates, often men coarse,

ignorant, and boisterous, and is chained to a round of duties and dangers

too frequently enforced with all the tyranny or caprice of arbitrary power
from which there is little intermission and no escape. A love of adventure
or a passionate desire to visit foreign countries may sometimes soften the
xii MEMOIR OF FALCONER.
picture and veil its harsher features ; but in the case of Falconer there appears
to have been no such alluring medium. He entered with strong reluctance

on his profession of a sailor, and was only forced into it by utter helpless-

ness and destitution. No other outlet seemed attainable every gate of hope ;

was shut against him. He therefore submitted, " forlorn of heart," as he

tells us, to the "severe decree," and embarked on that faithless and stormy
element, from which he was destined ultimately to reap his poetical fame,
and in which he found a sad and premature grave.
William Falconer was born in Edinburgh, on the nth of February
1732. In the parish register his father (who was also named William) is
designated a wigmaker; in other accounts he is termed a "poor barber."
He was probably both at different periods of his life ; but at this time the
wigmakers formed a class of respectable burgesses in the Scottish capital.

The maiden name of the poet's mother was Agnes Shand, and she was
remembered as a careful and exemplary matron, intelligent, industrious, and
affectionate. The elder Falconer carried on business in that ancient quarter

of the town known as the Netherbow, where stood the once famous " Port"
or gate condemned to destruction by the government of George II. , in petty

and ludicrous resentment of the Porteous Mob of 1736, but which flourished
long afterwards with its towers, battlements, and spire. This antique
structure extended right across High Street, dividing that most picturesque
of city thoroughfares from the privileged and historical district of the
Canongate. Shops and houses with wooden fronts and "fore- stairs" were
clustered round the Port, and in one of these dwelt William Falconer, a
citizen remarkable for his humour and eccentricity, who has been compared

to Partridge in "Tom Jones," and who, like that learned and witty tonsor,

was somewhat unthrifty and unfortunate. Pity it is that the jest and tale

which gladden these little coteries do not always carry prosperity with their

sunshine ! The merriest man in the Netherbow was one of the most

unlucky of its tradesmen. William Falconer became insolvent, and the

wig-making establishment was given up. His friends then came to his
assistance, and he was enabled to begin business as a grocer. The shop
was chiefly superintended by his wife; and on the death of this prudent

and excellent partner, the affairs of the old man again became deranged.

Recovery was hopeless, and the latter days of William Falconer were passed
in extreme indigence. The family of this unfortunate couple consisted of
three children : the poet, and a brother and sister, both born deaf and dumb,
whose pitiable condition added to the other calamities of the poor household.
 —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xm

The helpless brother and sister found an asylum as pauper-patients in the

Edinburgh Infirmary : William, after a little schooling with one Webster,

was put to sea. He was then probably not more than twelve or thirteen
years of age, but active and eager for the acquisition of knowledge. A love
of nature also — the poet's inheritance — came upon him. As a stripling, he
said, his bosom " danced to nature's charms." In the course of his foreign
wanderings and night-watches he must occasionally have recalled the unique
and magnificent features of his native city and its surrounding scenery ; but
the distressing circumstances of his boyhood could not be recollected without

painful emotion, and in his poetry he is silent as to the scene of his birth

and childhood.
It is possible that the humble fortunes of the family had not reached their

lowest ebb till some years after the birth of the poet. In describing, under
the name of Arion, his early attainments and misfortunes, Falconer con-
veys the impression that he had at least entered upon a liberal course of
education :

" On him fair science dawned in happier hour,

Awakening into bloom young fancy's flower ;

But soon adversity, with freezing blast,

The blossom withered, and the dawn o'ercast.
Forlorn of heart, and by severe decree,
Condemned reluctant to the faithless sea,
With long farewell he left the laurel grove
Where science and the tuneful sister's rove."

We have, however, the poet's own statement, made repeatedly to his friend,
Governor Hunter, that his education was confined to reading, writing, and
a little arithmetic ; and the early age at which he must have left home,
added to the straitened circumstances of his parents, may be held as con-
firmatory of the fact. The farewell to science and the laurel grove was
probably, in those days of artificial poetry, deemed necessary and indis-

pensable as an embellishment of the narrative. Falconer was entered

apprentice on board a merchant vessel belonging to Leith. The usual

period of apprenticeship for a sailor was then four years, but it is doubtful
whether Falconer served the whole of this period. Before he had completed
his eighteenth year we read of his having exchanged the merchant service
for the Royal Navy ; of his wandering, apparently without any fixed employ-
ment, through various scenes in the East, and of his engaging himself at
the port of Alexandria as a mate on board the Britannia, a merchantman
engaged in the Levant trade. In the Royal Navy the purser of his ship was
 —

XIV MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

Archibald Campbell, son of Professor Campbell of St Andrews, and who
is known as author of a parody on the style of Dr. Johnson, entitled
" Lexiphanes. " To this literary purser Falconer acted as servant, and,
according to Dr. Currie (the biographer of Burns), Campbell delighted in
improving the mind of the young seaman, and afterwards, when the latter

had attained celebrity, felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. The period
of tuition, however, must have been a brief one; for, in the autumn of 1750,
Falconer, then only eighteen, as we have stated, sailed from Alexandria for
Venice as second mate of the Britannia. Such an appointment for one so
young speaks well for his proficiency as a sailor. The British merchantmen
at this time, as we learn from Mr. Stanier Clarke, remained trading from

port to port in the Levant and Mediterranean, until ordered for England,
when they generally loaded with silks at Leghorn. The Britannia had
"wafted her commercial store" along the shores of Africa and Italy, and,
having touched at Alexandria and Crete, sailed for Venice, whence she was
to steer for England. The vessel, however, was overtaken by a dreadful
storm off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, and suffered shipwreck.

The whole of the crew, consisting of about fifty men, perished, with the
exception of three of the number, of whom Falconer happily was one.
The incidents of the voyage, and its disastrous termination, left an indelible

impression on the young sailor's memory; and years afterwards he selected

them as the subject of that poem which has rendered his name and misfor-
tunes immortal.
After the wreck of the Britannia, and his return to England, Falconer
revisited his native city, and there made his first appearance as an author.

The death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in March 1751, called forth

numerous elegies and lamentations, and among the public mourners was
our young poetical mariner. His effusion, printed at Edinburgh, is entitled

" A Poem Sacred to the Memory of his Royal Highness Frederick, Prince

of Wales." The poem, it must be admitted, was one of the most unpromis-
ing of youthful productions. Melpomene has rarely been invoked with less

success ; for conventional as the poetical style and diction of that period
were, such puerile and inflated lines as the following — the best in the piece

.
— are below even the ordinary standard :

" Oh, bear me to some awful silent glade,

Where cedars form an unremitting shade ;

Where never track of human feet was known ;

Where never cheerful light of Phcebus shone ;

 — :

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xv

Where chirping linnets warble tales of love,

And hoarser winds howl murmuring through the grove ;

Where some unhappy wretch aye»mourns his doom,

Deep melancholy wandering through the gloom
Where solitude and meditation roam,
And where no dawning glimpse of hope can come !

Place me in such an unfrequented shade,

To speak to none but with the mighty dead ;

To assist the pouring rains with brimful eyes,

And aid hoarse howling Boreas with my sighs."

The youth and circumstances of the writer form an excuse for such imma-
turity of taste and judgment. But it is curious to find Falconer, many years
afterwards, in the second edition of his Shipwreck, allude with some com-
placency to this first production :

" Thou who hast taught the tragic harp to mourn,

In early youth, o'er royal Frederick's urn."

His desire to appear loyal, and steadfast in his loyalty, had overpowered
his critical perceptions. For about ten years subsequent to this period our

author is supposed to have been engaged in the merchant service. He has

enumerated all the shores he traversed —from the Peruvian regions to savage
Labrador, and from Damascus, "pride of Asian plains," to the Isthmus of
Darien. Adversity, he said, still pursued him, but self-improvement was
not neglected. He picked up acquaintance with the French, Spanish, and
Italian languages ; and he occasionally, when in Britain, sent a copy of
verses to that popular repertory of fugitive literature, the "Gentleman's
Magazine." Some of these pieces have been identified and reprinted. The
best of them are nautical, showing that he had at length struck into the
true path of his genius. The following " Description of a Ninety-gun Ship"
is correct and animated \
—
" Amidst a wood of oaks with canvas leaves,
Which formed a floating forest on the waves,
There stood a tower, whose vast stupendous size
Reared its huge mast, and seemed to gore the skies.
From which a bloody pendant stretched afar
Its comet-tail, denouncing ample war :

Two younger giants,* of inferior height,

Displayed their sporting streamers to the sight
The base below, another island rose,
To pour Britannia's thunder on her foes :

With bulk immense, like ./Etna, she surveys

Above the rest, the lesser Cyclades :

* "Younger giants :" fore and mizen masts.

 ; —
:: "

xvi MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

Profuse of gold, in lustre like the sun,
Splendid with regal luxury she shone,
Lavish in wealth, luxuriant in her pride,
Behold the gilded mass exulting ride !

Her curious prow divides the waves,silver

In the salt ooze her radiant sides she laves ;

From stem to stern, her wondrous length survey,

Rising a beauteous Venus from the sea
Her stem, with naval drapery engraved,
Showed mimic warriors, who the tempest braved ;

Whose visage fierce defied the lashing surge,

Of Gallic pride the emblematic scourge.
Tremendous figures, lo ! her stern displays,
And holds a Pharos * of distinguished blaze :

By night it shines a star of brightest form,

To point her way, and light her through the storm :

See dread engagements pictured to the life,

See admirals maintain the glorious strife :

Here breathing images in painted ire,

Seem for their country's freedom to expire :

Victorious fleets the flying fleets pursue

Here strikes a ship, and there exults a crew :

A frigate here blows up with hideous glare,

And adds fresh terrors to the bleeding war.
But leaving feigned ornaments, behold !

Eight hundred youths, of heart and sinew bold,

Mount up her shrouds, or to her tops ascend,
Some haul her braces, some her foresail bend ;

Full ninety brazen guns her port-holes fill,

Ready with nitrous magazines to kill
From dread embrasures formidably peep,
And seem to threaten ruin to the deep
On pivots fixed, the well-ranged swivels lie,

Or to point downward, or to brave the sky :

While peteraroes swell with infant rage,

Prepared, though small, with fury to engage.
Thus armed, may Britain long her state maintain,
And with triumphant navies rule the main !

Not less faithful are the satirical sketches entitled " The Chaplain's Peti-

tion" and " The Midshipman," but they have no great poetical merit. The
admirable naval song of "The Storm" ("Cease, rude Boreas, blustering
railer!"), which the singing of Incledon once made so popular, has been
assigned to Falconer, instead of its reputed author, George Alexander
Stevens. There is a mixture of carelessness and jollity, combined with a
flow of lyrical melody, in this song, which appears to us quite foreign to
Falconer's usual manner. It was certainly easier and more natural for

Stevens, a good song writer and man of imitative talent, to play the sailor,

* "Pharos :
" her poop Ian thorn.
 — —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xvu

and import some nautical phrases, than for Falconer to write once, and once
only, in a strain different from all his other compositions. We believe,

also, that if "The Storm" had been written by our author, he would have
acknowledged and claimed it, proud as he was of displaying his naval

knowledge and enthusiasm.

From the merchant service Falconer is reported to have re-entered the
Royal Navy, and to have been on board the Ramilies man-of-war when that
ship was wrecked in the Channel near Plymouth, in February 1 760. The
officers and men of the Ramifies numbered 734, and of these only one mid-
shipman and twenty-five seamen were saved. The poet is said to have been
the midshipman ; * but we can find no authority for the assertion. Had
Falconer sailed with the Ramifies, or been preserved a second time from
shipwreck, under circumstances so tragic and memorable, he would scarcely
have refrained from some allusion to the event in his poetry. We have also

the distinct statement of Mr. Clarke, that after the wreck of the Britannia,
in 1750, Falconer continued in the merchant service until he had gained the
patronage of his Royal Highness Edward, Duke of York, by dedicating to
him his poem of "The Shipwreck."
That great narrative poem, so truly British in subject and feeling, and so
original in execution, appeared in May 1762, in the form of a thin quarto
volume, price five shillings. It was illustrated with a chart of the ship's
course, and an engraving of the elevation of a merchant ship, with all her
masts, yards, sails, and rigging. Such a work was a novelty in what was
termed polite literature. The descriptive Muse never before appeared in
such a nautical costume ! The title-page bore that the volume was "printed
for the author, " an indication, probably, that the poet had not been able to
find a purchaser for the copyright of his work ; and it was dedicated, by
permission, to the Duke of York, " Rear- Admiral of the Blue Squadron of
his Majesty's Fleet." —
To this dedication a plain unflattering inscription
Falconer affixed his name. The title of the work was simply "The Ship-
wreck, a Poem in Three Cantos, by a Sailor," with the motto from Virgil
(i^neid, bk. ii. v. 5)

" quseque ipse miserrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui."

It is gratifying to find that the royal patron acknowledged the honour con-
* ferred upon him, and testified his sense of the merits of the poem by a

* " Lives of Scottish Poets." London, 1822.

2
xvm MEMOIR OF FALCONER,
prompt and substantial mark of regard. He advised Falconer to quit the
merchant service and enter the Royal Navy ; and, in consequence of the
Duke's recommendation and influence, the poet was rated as a midshipman
on board Sir Edward Hawke's ship, the Royal George. At the same time
his poem no less rapidly advanced in popularity. Though only an outline
or skeleton of what it was afterwards to become under the hands of its

author, the Shipwreck was hailed as one of our finest and most original

national poems. Its descriptions were pronounced to be not inferior to

those in the ^Eneid ; and, in versifying his sea language, Falconer was held

to have achieved a greater miracle of success than that accomplished by

Homer, in reducing his catalogue of ships into flowing and sonorous verse.

Such exaggerated praise was an error, but it was an error on the right side.

It is seldom that the world is too generous to those who minister to its

instruction or delight.

This was the happiest period of Falconer's life. He could tread the
quarter-deck of the Royal George with conscious and justifiable pride. He
had won poetical fame, unquestionably the dearest wish of his heart ; he
had, unsolicited, obtained professional advancement ; and he enjoyed the
patronage of a young and gallant prince, who had the taste to appreciate
and the power to reward his genius. Though long buffeted by adverse
gales of fortune, he was only yet in his thirtieth year, still eager to run the

race for manly honours ; and Hope, that had so often allured and deceived
him, might now assume her fairest form and brightest colours. His gloomy
forebodings and querulous discontent were all hushed in joy and gratulation.
Love, also, was joined to Hope. Falconer's temperament seems to have

been grave and serious — perhaps austere. His appearance was not prepos-
sessing, bespeaking the rough sailor rather than the poet. But he had all

the poet's warmth and depth of feeling ; and his solitary and somewhat
rugged nature, when kindled up by contact with a congenial mind, found
expression in fluent and impressive speech. Those who have most keenly
felt adversity and neglect are soonest melted by kindness and sympathy.

The worth and talents of Falconer attracted the notice of a young lady,
daughter of the surgeon of Sheerness Yard ; an intimacy sprung up between
them, though discountenanced by Mr. Hicks, the lady's father; and the
charms of " Miranda" called forth some pleasing ballad stanzas from the
author of the Shipwreck. In political or satirical verse (which he after-
wards attempted) Falconer signally failed ; in amatory poetry he had better
success, for he wrote from genuine passion and true impulses. Stanzas
 — — ; ;

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xix

like the following have rarely proceeded from the orlop, or midshipman's
cabin :

ADDRESS TO MIRANDA.
The smiling plains, profusely gay,
Are dressed in all the pride of May ;

The birds on every spray above

To rapture wake the vocal grove.

But, ah ! Miranda, without thee,

Nor spring nor summer smiles on me :

All lonely in the secret shade,

I mourn thy absence, charming maid !

Oh, soft as love ! as honour fair !

Serenely sweet as vernal air !

Come to my arms for you alone;

Can all my absence past atone.

Oh, come ! and to my bleeding heart

Thy sovereign balm of love impart
Thy presence lasting.joy shall bring,
And give the year eternal spring !

We also subjoin the second of these pieces, which, in plaintive tenderness

and melody, is equal to the ballad strains of the author's countrymen,
Mickle or Mallet :

THE FOND LOVER.

A BALLAD, WRITTEN AT SEA BY THE AUTHOR OF " THE SHIPWRECK."

A nymph of every charm possessed,

That native virtue gives,
Within my bosom all confessed,
In bright idea lives.
For her my trembling numbers play
Along the pathless deep,
While, sadly social with my lay,
The winds in concert weep.

If beauty's sacred influence charms

The rage of adverse fate ;

Say why the pleasing soft alarms

Such cruel pangs create ?
Since all her thoughts by sense refined,
Unartful truth express
Say wherefore sense and truth are joined
To give my soul distress ?

If when her blooming lips I press,

Which vernal fragrance fills,

Through all my veins the sweet excess

In trembling motion thrills :
 ;

XX MEMOIR OF FALCONER.
Say whence this secret anguish grows,
Congenial with my joy !

And why the touch, where pleasure glows,

Should vital peace destroy ?

If, when my fair, in melting song,

Awakes the vocal lay,

Not all your notes, ye Phocian throng,
Such pleasing sounds Convey
Thus wrapt all o'er with fondest love,
Why heaves this broken sigh ?

For then my blood forgets to move,

I gaze, adore, and die.

Accept, my charming maid, the strain

Which you alone inspire ;

To thee the dying strings Complain

That quiver on my lyre.
Oh, give this bleeding bosom ease,
That knows no joy but thee ;

Teach me thy happy art to please,

Or deign to love like me.
W. F.
Royal George, August 2 [1762].

Before the close of the year the Duke of York sailed again in command
of the fleet, and Falconer, thinking probably, with Gray, that it is ''better

Ode on the Duke of

that gratitude should sing than expectation," wrote an

York's Second Departure front England as Rear- Admiral. " He composed

it," says Governor Hunter, who was then a midshipman in the Royal George,
"during an occasional absence from his messmates, when he retired into a

small space formed between the cable-tiers and the ship's side." * Governor
Hunter must have been mistaken in his recollection of the piece thus com-
posed. The Ode was not published till some months after the Duke's
departure, and it is an elaborate production of above two hundred and
thirty lines, in all the intricate variety of metre to be found in Dryden's
great Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, of which it is in some respects an imitation,
though in quality more akin to the early Pindaric attempts of Swift. The
gratitude of the poet is warmly expressed, and in the conclusion of the ode

* Mr. Stanier Clarke's Life of Falconer prefixed to Shipwreck, London 1804. Mr.
Clarke states that Falconer's Ode was published on occasion of the Duke of York embark-
ing on board the Centurion with Commodore Harrison. But the Centjirion did not sail
on this expedition till September 1763, and Falconer's poem was published some months
earlier. It was written before the conclusion of the war. The second departure of the
Duke was that in November 1762, when his Royal Highness was associated in the com-
mand with Sir Charles Hardy, and "moved to war," as the poet says, "through storms
and wintry seas."
 — " ; ;

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xxi

he hints that he may yet be called upon to celebrate some great naval
victory :

" Perhaps the chief to whom I sing

May yet ordain auspicious days,
To wake the lyre with nobler lays,
And tune to war the nervous string.
For who, untaught in Neptune's school,
Though all the powers of genius he possess,
Though disciplined by classic rule,
With daring pencil can display
The fight that thunders on the watery way
And all its horrid incidents express ?
To him, my Muse, these warlike strains belong
Source of thy hope, and patron of thy song !"

This warlike wish was frustrated by the treaty of peace between Great
Britain, France, and Spain, which was signed at Paris on the loth of Feb-
ruary 1763.
As Falconer could not have obtained further promotion in the Royal
Navy without some years of service, he was advised to exchange into the
civil department; and in the year 1763 he was appointed purser of the
Glory frigate, 32 guns. The purser, as he himself has stated, is "an officer

appointed by the Lords of the Admiralty to take charge of the provisions

of a ship of war, and to see that they are carefully distributed to the officers
and crew, according to the instructions which he has received from the
Commissioners of the Navy for that purpose." Thus settled, the naval poet

completed his happiness by marrying his "Miranda," who appears to have

been every way worthy of his affection. Mr. Clarke says, "Mrs. Falconer
is described to me as displaying keen abilities ; and that it was the lustre of

her mind rather than of her person which attracted and confirmed the
affection of her husband." A contemporary of the lady, who knew her.

and a man of literary tastes, Mr. Joseph Moser, describes the poet's wife
as "a woman of cultivated mind, elegant in her person, and sensible and
agreeable in conversation.
At this time, or shortly before, Falconer is said to have paid a final visit

to Scotland. Dr. Irving, in a sketch of the poet's life, first mentioned the
fact, adding that Falconer "resided for some time at the manse of Glads-
muir, which was then possessed by his illustrious kinsman, Dr. Robertson.
This great historian, whose father was the cousin-german of old Falconer,
seems to have been proud to acknowledge his relationship to the ingenious

self-taught poet." Dr. Irving, however, is wrong either as to the date of

 a;

xxii MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

Falconer's visit or the residence of Dr. Robertson. If the former took place,

as he states, after the publication of the Shipwreck, the poet must have met
his kinsman in Edinburgh, for Robertson left Gladsmuir in 1758. The
meeting most probably took place in the Scottish capital, and each had
special cause for congratulation. Robertson, by his first work, the " His-
tory of Scotland," had reached the highest popularity: Falconer, by his

one poem, had earned scarcely less distinction, overcoming by the force of
native genius the difficulties incident to his nautical task, and uniting with
his technical lore the inspiration and energy of a true poet. We have no
record of the feelings of Falconer on revisiting, at this interesting period,
the haunts of his boyhood : the old Netherbow Port and High Street, and
the shores of Leith, whence, sad at heart, he had first embarked on the sea.

There is usually much disappointment at such reunions. Every object

appears less than memory, aided by imagination, had represented it

schoolboy friends are gone, or the few that are

T
left, busy with their own
pursuits, seem cold and careless ; we look for some cherished object —
house or tree —and it is removed. Time has hastened on, and we forget that

its flight effaces the old landmarks. But Falconer had not lived in vain ; he
had struggled through the past up to worldly honour, and he could look
forward into the future without dread, solaced and cheered by domestic
happiness.
His fortunes, however, were always fluctuating. After the peace, his

ship, the Glory ', was laid up in ordinary at Chatham, and a purser's half-

pay was but a slender provision. At this juncture he found a kind and
considerate friend in one of the Commissioners of the Navy, Mr. Han way,
brother of Jonas Hanway, whose controversy with Johnson on the qualities

and effects of tea has preserved his name better than his published travels,

foreign or domestic. Commissioner Hanway admired the genius of the

purser of the Glory, and he set about preparing for him an appropriate
residence. "The captain's cabin," says Mr. Clarke, " was ordered to be
fitted up with a stove, and with every addition of comfort that could be
procured, in order that Falconer might thus be enabled to enjoy his
favourite propensity (literary occupation) without either molestation or
expense."
The first emanation from this marine study was a new edition of the
Shipwreck, "corrected and enlarged," which appeared in an octavo volume
in 1764, printed not for the author (as in the former instance), but for A.
Millar in the Strand. This enlarged edition was almost a new work.
 — —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. XXlll

Above nine hundred lines were added, and these included all of what may-
be called the character-painting of the poem, as the delineations of Albert
and Rodmond, and the episode of Palemon. In the "Advertisement"
Falconer made this statement :

" Although it is so frequent a practice to take the advantage of public

approbation, and raise the price of performances that have been much
encouraged, the author chooses to steer in a quite different channel. It

being a considerable time since the first edition sold off (notwithstanding
the high price and the singularity of the subject), he might very justly
continue the price ; but as it deterred a number of the inferior officers of the

sea from purchasing it, at their repeated requests it has been printed now in

a smaller edition. At the same time the author is sorry to observe that the
gentlemen of the sea, for whose entertainment it was chiefly calculated,

have hardly made one-tenth of the purchasers."

Falconer, like Arbuthnot, ' knew his art but not his trade. " He was
ambitious of his reputation for professional skill —not covetous of money.
Had the latter been his object, he would probably, like his countryman
Thomson (though Thomson was only driven to such a step by necessity),
or like the earlier Georgian poets, have had recourse to a subscription
edition, which his naval friends would, no doubt, have rendered profitable.

The next production of our author was a rhyming satire on Lord Chatham,
Wilkes, and Churchill, entitled The De?nagogue. It must have been written
after the publication of Churchill's "Gotham" in the spring of 1764, and
before the death of that unscrupulous but powerful satirist in November of
the same year. Nearly all the literary Scotsmen of that period were
engaged in defence of the Bute Administration. It had become a point of
honour with them, as the contest seemed to be one, as of old, between the
thistle and the rose. Wilkes, Churchill, the Whigs and Dissenters, were
against Scotland and Scotsmen. Chatham abjured local and national pre-
judices, but he fought on the same side. Never was the Crown or Govern-
ment more fiercely assailed than at this time ; and besides nationality of
feeling — the perfervidum ingenhtm Scotorum roused by repeated attacks
Falconer was bound, both by gratitude and consistency, to the side of the
king's friends. His best patron was the brother of his sovereign, and his

first poetical effort was devoted to the cause of royalty. His Demagogue,
however, was a poor fragmentary performance, remarkable for its virulence
and not for its poetry. Of the tact, humour, or wit, essential in political
satire, he was destitute —his strength was derived from the sea ; and as
XXIV MEMOIR OF FALCONER.
the sailor fears to whistle in a storm, Falconer would have best consulted
his fame by remaining silent during the noise and fury of the political
elements.
The remaining five years of Falconer's life are involved in some obscu-
rity.- In 1767, according to Mr. Clarke, he was appointed from the Glory
to the Swiftsure — still, we presume, a purser; and then we hear of his
having left his naval retreat at Chatham, and of his being obliged to take
up his abode in a garret in London, deriving a pittance from writing in the
"Critical Review." Why he should have resigned his naval appointment
does not appear. He was too practical and too sensible a man to have
abandoned a secure and respectable position for the precarious gains of

authorship, for which he had no peculiar vocation ; and the death of his

patron, the Duke of York (September 17, 1767), could not, we presume,
have caused his retirement. The story of the garret is, we suspect, fabulous.
It is certain that Falconer could not have struggled long, as Mr. Clarke
asserts, against the res angusta domus, for we have only a period of two
years between 1767 and his death, and during that time one at least of his
most intimate friends did not consider him to be in poverty. A bookseller,
Mr. John Murray (grandfather of the present eminent publisher of that
name), requested the poet to join him as partner. In a letter, dated
October 16, 1768, Mr. Murray writes to Falconer, then at Dover, that a
certain Mr. Sandby, bookseller, opposite St. Dunstan's Church, was about
to retire from his shop in Fleet Street, and that his business could be
obtained for a sum not much beyond ^400. "I have little reason," says
Mr. Murray, "to fear success by myself in this undertaking, yet I think so

many additional advantages would accrue to us both, were your forces and
mine joined, that I cannot help mentioning it to you, and making you the
offer of entering into company." **
The poet, he added, would be assumed
as partner on equal terms. This offer proves that Falconer could not have
been in the very reduced circumstances in which he is represented by his
biographers, and it proves also that he must have possessed the correct and
steady habits of a man of business. He seems to have declined the offer,

probably because his *

' Marine Dictionary " was then near completion, and
he might reasonably anticipate from its publication some favourable naval
appointment. His " Dictionary " appeared in August 1769, dedicated to
the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. It had engaged his utmost

* Mr. Stanier Clarke's Life of Falconer, p. 37.

 —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xxv

application, he said, for some years. The undertaking was first suggested
to him by his "worthy and ingenious friend," George Lewis Scott, Esq.,
and its utility had been acknowledged by Sir Edward Hawke, and other
naval authorities. In a country deriving its principal sources of strength
from the superiority of its marine, such a work was evidently wanted, and
Falconer had laboured strenuously to render his Dictionary accurate and
complete. All that related to the equipment and movements of a ship, or
to the practice of naval war, was derived, he said, chiefly from his own
observation ; in treating of the artillery he had consulted various authors,
and in the part connected with ship-building he acknowledged his obligations
to M. Du Ham el— a high authority on naval architecture —who had
written to him on the subject of his work in complimentary terms. The
Dictionary, we may add, was a large quarto volume, and was illustrated
with a variety of original designs of shipping in different situations, with
separate views of the masts, sails, &c.
Such an important service could not fail to attract the notice of the

Admiralty, and remind them of the strong claims of its author. Accordingly,
we find that almost immediately after the publication of his Dictionary,
Falconer received an appointment which promised to be the most lucrative
and considerable he had yet held. The affairs of India were then in a
critical position, in consequence of the wars of Hyder Ali, and of disputed
territorial revenues, and the Company resolved on sending out three com-
missioners or supervisors, invested with extraordinary powers for the emer-
gency. These were, Henry Vansittart, Luke Scrofton, and Colonel Francis
Forde. The Aurora frigate was selected for the voyage, and Falconer was
nominated as purser of the vessel, with a promise that he would also
receive the appointment of private secretary to the commissioners.

Before embarking on this mission Falconer prepared a third edition of

the Shipwreck. He put his name on the title-page, left out the dedication,
and prefixed to the volume an advertisement, stating that he had given the
poem a strict and thorough revision, from which he flattered himself that

it had received very considerable improvements. He was then living in

Somerset House, from which this intimation is dated, October I, 1769

the day preceding his departure from England. About two hundred new
lines were added to the poem, and its general arrangement was improved.
Favourite images and descriptions were expanded or finished off with
greater care. But the edition had also its defects. In substituting simple
for inflated expressions, and in removing redundancies of description, the
xxvi MEMOIR OF FALCONER.
poet occasionally rendered the passages bald and prosaic. His attempts
to generalize the technical details were also in some instances unfavourable.
Precision as well as animation was lost. Mr. Clarke conceived that
Falconer, in his agitation and joy on being appointed to the Aurora, had
neglected this edition, and left the last alterations to his friend Mallet. This
is an unwarranted and, indeed, absurd conjecture, for Mallet had been four
years dead. Whatever were the moral and mental defects of Mallet, he was
a good literary artist ; and had he retouched the Shipwreck, the poem, as
respects mere diction, would probably have been the better for his revision.

But Falconer's advertisement seems conclusive as to the third edition being

revised by himself; no other person would have taken such liberties with
his text, and the new passages introduced mark his own hand. He may,
however, have been hurried in his task by the necessity of preparing for
his departure ; and we think Mr. Clarke acted judiciously as editor of the
poem, rn collating the different editions, and restoring the text to something
like distinctness and purity. Not a line was inserted that had not been
sanctioned by the author —he was made to correct himself. We have
followed Mr. Clarke's example in this reprint of the Shipwreck, but have
made a greater use of the third and latest edition the last seen by the poet. —
The Aurora sailed from Spithead on the 2nd of October 1769. Among
the passengers, besides the three commissioners, was the Rev. William
Hirst, chaplain to the expedition — an accomplished astronomer, who had
observed the transit of Venus, in 1761, at Madras, and who was afterwards
associated with the Astronomer Royal in Greenwich Observatory. From
a letter written by this gentleman we learn that the Aurora arrived at the

Cape of Good Hope on the 6th of December, that the commissioners had
been harmonious and happy on board ship, and had been hospitably received
by the Dutch governor and his council. They made various excursions into

the country, and finally left the Cape, after a fortnight's stay, on the 27th

of December. Captain Lee, who commanded the frigate, expressed his

intention of proceeding by the Mozambique Channel, instead of stretching
as usual into the great Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar. There is now
little risk, by the diligent use of sextant and chronometer, in making this

passage during the fair season from April to September. But the Channel
abounds in shoals, and Captain Lee was a stranger to the navigation, while

the season was too far advanced. The commissioners remonstrated, but
the captain was obstinate. Mr. Vansittart was so impressed with the
danger of the rash experiment, that he would have quitted the Aurora if
 — ;

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xxvn

another outward-bound East Indiaman had been then at the Cape. The
Aurora sailed, and the result justified the worst fears that had been enter-
tained —the ill-fated ship never reached its destination. Months and years
elapsed, but no tidings came. The captain had spoken of touching at
Johanna, one of the Comorro Islands, for provisions ; he had also talked of
landing on the island of St. Paul's ; inquiries were made, but no trace of
the vessel, after her leaving the Cape, was ever obtained. About four
years afterwards, on the 19th of October 1773, a seaman, a negro, was
examined before the East India Directors on the subject of the wreck. He
stated that the Aurora had struck on a reef of rocks off Mocoa; that himself
and four others were the only persons saved ; that he and his companions
had been two years on an island after their escape ; and that they had at
length been rescued by a country ship, which happened to touch at the
island. What credit was given to the man's statement is not mentioned
the main fact, the loss of the Aurora, was, alas, but too apparent, and with
her had perished the poet whose genius and fate have given so deep and
melancholy an interest to the catastrophe.

" Farewell, poor Falconer ! When the dark sea

Bursts like despair, I shall remember thee ;

Nor ever from the sounding beach depart

Without thy music stealing on my heart,
And thinking still I hear dread Ocean say,
"
'
Thou hast declared my might, be thou my prey !
'

Bowles.

The personal appearance and habits of Falconer have been minutely

described by Mr. Clarke, from information communicated by those who
knew the poet. "He was about five feet seven inches in height, with a
dark weather-beaten complexion, and rather what is termed hard-featured,
being considerably marked with the small-pox ; his hair was of a brownish
hue. In point of address his manner was blunt, awkward, and forbidding
but he spoke with great fluency ; and his simple yet impressive diction was
couched in words which reminded his hearers of the terseness of Swift.

Though he possessed a warm and friendly disposition, he was fond of con-

troversy, and inclined to satire. His observation was keen and rapid ; his

criticisms on any inaccuracy of language or expression were frequently

severe ;
yet this severity was always intended to create mirth, and not by
any means to show his superiority or to give the smallest offence. In his
natural temper he was cheerful, and frequently used to amuse his messmates
by composing acrostics on their favourites, in which he particularly excelled.
xxvm MEMOIR OF FALCONER.
As a professional man, he was a thorough seaman ; and, like most of that
profession, was kind, generous, and benevolent. " The last remark betrays
the amour propre of the naval chaplain. Falconer himself was less laudatory
of the mass of his brother sailors, and, like Fielding, when delineating their

character, threw some shades into the picture."* He admitted, however,

that there was to be found in almost eveiy private sailor, a virtue which
was unknown many of his officers—-the virtue of
to emulation. There was
hardly a common tar, he said, who was not envious of superior skill in his
fellows, and jealous on all occasions of being outdone in what he considered
a branch of his duty. This was pre-eminently the case with our author
himself. He not only mastered the principles and details of his profession,
so as to be able to compile his elaborate Dictionary of the Marine, but he
prided himself more on his reputation as a seaman than on his character as
a poet.
The widow of Falconer (they had no children) long survived him. She
obtained possession of his apartments in Somerset House, and was liberally
assisted by Mr. T. Cadell, the publisher, who derived considerable profits

from the continued sale of the Marine Dictionary and Shipwreck, of which
he held the copyrights. Mr. Moser, already mentioned, in one of his
numerous communications to the "European Magazine," states, that meeting
the poet's widow one
and expressing incidentally in conversation his
day,
admiration of the Shipwreck, she burst into tears. " She presented me,"
he adds, "with a copy of the Shipwreck, and seemed much affected by my
commiseration of the misfortunes of a man whose work appears in its

catastrophe prophetic. " She died at Bath.

The fame of Falconer rests securely on this one monument of his genius.

Though limited to the simplicity of a narrative of facts, and chiefly to a

single incident, his poem of the Shipwreck possesses or suggests nearly all

the primary elements of poetry and painting, of profound interest and over-

* See "Midshipman" in his Marine Dictionary. "No character, in their

article
opinion, more excellent than that of the common sailor, whom they generally sup-
is

pose to be treated with great severity by his officers Blinded by these preposses-
sions, he (the midshipman) is thrown off his guard, and very soon surprised to find,
amongst those honest sailors, a crew of abandoned miscreants, ripe for any mischief or
villany. Perhaps, after a little observation, many of them will appear to him equally
destitute of gratitude, shame, or justice, and only deterred from the commission of any
crimes by the terror of severe punishment." Fielding, in his " Voyage to Lisbon," in-
dulges in similar remarks. But it is scarcely necessary to add, that both the naval and
military service have, by proper regulations and better instruction, been greatly elevated
in moral character within the last century.
 — : —

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. XXIX

whelming pathos. The sea, with its various phenomena of beauty and
terror, its storm and sunshine —the stately ship with its magnificent tracery
and equipage, and its gallant crew — the classic and picturesque shores of
the Mediterranean — and the appalling event of the shipwreck, with its

horrors, despair, and death; such are the materials with which the poet had
to deal in relating his story, " new to epic lore." The opening lines of the
first canto strike the key-note, as it were, to a train of romantic and interest-
ing associations :

" A ship from Egypt, o'er the deep impelled

By guiding winds, her course for Venice held
Of famed Britannia were the gallant crew,
And from that isle her name the Vessel drew."

The name of Britannia, if fortuitous, was one of the felicities of the poet's
subject ; if assumed for the occasion, it furnishes an instance of his poetical
art and skill. Had the ship been named the Mary Jane, or the Janies
Barnes, the effect would have been very different. But still more important
towards the poetical treatment of the subject was the scene of the catastrophe
— the shores of Greece. All the images and recollections arising from
beautiful scenery, the august remains of ancient art, and the wisdom and
patriotism of the most heroic age of the world, were at once enlisted as
auxiliaries of the story. The ship Sailing along such shores became an
object of deeper interest and of poetical sympathy; and its final destruction
occurred at a spot memorable on that illustrious coast. " In all Attica,"
says Byron, " if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene
more interesting than Cape Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen
columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the
philosopher, the supposed scene of Plato's conversations will not be unwel-
come ; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over
' isles that crown the ^Egean deep;' but for an Englishman, Colonna has
yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's Shipwreck. Pallas
and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell :

*
Here in the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep.'"

This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance ; and the
imagination instantly conjures up its appearance on that fatal day when the
lightning flashed among the ruined columns, and the doomed vessel, driven

like a fury by the storm, bounded through the waves towards the rocky
shore. In the softer scenes of the poem this power of association and local
 — — ; ; ;: ;

XXX MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

painting has an inexpressible charm ; and in the whole range of our de-

scriptive poetry there is nothing finer than the pictures of the sunset and
midnight on the shores of Candia, as seen from the sea. The solemn calm
and delicious beauty and repose of this Eastern landscape prepare the
reader, by contrast, for the nautical description that follows, which is brought
out with great effect. The boatswain's whistle breaks the silence, and the
order to weigh anchor is given. The sailors swarm aloft, fix the bars, and

heave round the windlass :

" Up-torn reluctant from its oozy cave

The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave.
High on the slippery masts the yards ascend,
And far abroad the canvas wings extend.
Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,
While azure radiance trembles on her sides
The lunar rays in long reflection gleam,
With silver deluging the fluid stream.
Levant and Thracian gales alternate play,
Then in the Egyptian quarter die away.
A calm ensues adjacent shores they dread,
:

The boats, with rowers manned, are sent ahead

With cordage fastened to the lofty prow
Aloof to sea the stately ship they tow
The nervous crew their sweeping oars extend,
And pealing shouts the shore of Candia rend."

The ship is then minutely described. Falconer has been blamed for adding
to it "frowning artillery;" but every Levant trader carried guns, and the
Britannia is represented as a first-class merchantman. The natives gather

round the shore in the noon-day sun to see the vessel depart " majestically
slow before the breeze," the imperial flag unfurled:

" Then towered the masts, the canvas swelled on high,

And waving streamers floated in the sky.
Thus the rich vessel moves in trim array,
Like some fair virgin on her bridal day
Thus, like a swan, she cleaves the watery plain,
The pride and wonder of the iEgean main."

It is impossible for word-painting to excel this in clear poetic beauty. Some

of the smaller subsidiary sketches, as the waterspout, the dying dolphin, the
troop of porpoises, &c, are also inimitable. The tragic portion of the
poem is ushered in by a description remarkable for its vivid expression and
melancholy grandeur :

" His race performed, the sacred lamp of day

Now dipt in western clouds his parting ray
 — " ; —
! ;

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xxxi

His languid fires, half lost in ambient haze,

Refract along the dusk a crimson blaze ;

Tilldeep immerged the sickening orb descends,

And cheerless night o'er heaven her reign extends.
Sad evening's hour, how different from the past
No flaming pomp, no blushing glories cast,
No ray of friendly light is seen around ;

The moon and stars in hopeless shade are drowned."

The characters of the chief officers of the vessel are well delineated and
contrasted. Albert, the commander, is brave, liberal, and humane, "the
father of his crew;" Rodmond, the next in command, is coarse, boisterous,

and obstinate, yet dexterous and fearless as a seaman. One fine touch of
humanity redeems his character: amidst the horrors of the wreck the helms-
man is struck blind by the lightning

" Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan behind,

Touched with compassion, gazed upon the blind
And, while around his sad companions crowd,
He guides the unhappy victim to the shroud :

'
Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend he cries !
'

' Thy only succour on the mast relies.'

The third in command is Arion, or Falconer himself, who is just men-

tioned when this modest and striking transition is made :

" But what avails it to record a name

That courts no rank among the sons of fame?"

Palemon, the friend of Arion, and his love story, somewhat interrupt the
progress of the narrative, yet few readers would wish them away. His
passion is one of unsophisticated nature and simple truth —a scene from
Arcadian life — and it is in many parts touched with great delicacy and
tenderness. Objection made to the historical episodes and
is more justly

classical allusions with which the poem abounds. These occur chiefly
towards the close of the work, when the reader's anxiety and interest are
strongly excited by the impending catastrophe. We see the ship
*
'
quivering
o'er the topmost waves," or plunging headlong down the "horrid vale,"
the furious breakers lashing the strand on which the crew are every moment
in danger of being dashed ; and we are stopped with an enumeration of the
ancient Grecian states and their philosophers, with the Delphic oracle, Par-
nassus, and Helicon. There is much tawdry ornament, tumid expression,

and forced comparison in these passages ; but the poet no sooner touches
the sea, than he regains his native strength. His verse rises and swells like
 — ; ; : ; :: : ;; —

xxxu MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

the tempest, and in such lines as the following we hear the voice of a great
poet mingling with the storm: —
" Thus they direct the flying bark before
The impelling floods, that lash her to the shore
High o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire,
Uprolled in hills of fluctuating fire ;

With labouring throes she rolls on either side,

And dips her gunnels in the yawning tide
Her joints, unhinged, in palsied languors play,
As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray
The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds,
And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds
From wintry magazines that sweep the sky,
Descending globes of hail impetuous fly
High on the masts, with pale and livid rays,
Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze :

The ethereal dome, in mournful pomp arrayed,

Now buried lies beneath impervious shade,
Now, flashing round intolerable light,
Redoubles all the horror of the night
Such terror Sinai's trembling hill o'erspread,
When Heaven's loud trumpet sounded o'er its head:
It seemed, the wrathful Angel of the wind
Had all the horrors of the skies combined,
And here, to one ill-fated ship opposed,
At once the dreadful magazine disclosed."

And this angel of the wind is personified in a few lines of great power:

" And lo ! tremendous o'er the deep he springs,

The inflaming sulphur flashing from his wings — :

Hark his strong voice the dismal silence breaks,

!

Mad Chaos from the chains of death awakes

Loud, and more loud, the rolling peals enlarge,
And blue on deck the fiery tides discharge."

The resources of the seamen in this awful extremity, the throwing of the

guns overboard, and the mournful consultation of the pilots, are depicted
with a terrible reality. The incident of cutting down the mast seems like
a great and sublime sacrifice, exciting intense sympathy

" Fast by the fated pine bold Rodmond stands,

The impatient axe hung gleaming in his hands
Brandished on high, with dreadful sound,
it fell

The tall mast, groaning, felt the deadly wound

Deep gashed beneath, the tottering structure rings,
And crashing, thundering, o'er the quarter swings."

The ship at length breaks up ; we watch it with the painful interest due to
a living being. Lifted high by a tremendous wave she strikes in her descent
 — ;

MEMOIR OF FALCONER. xxxm

upon the marble crags, and, wounded, plunges and reels over the heaving
surge; a second shock bilges the splitting vessel, and a third rends asunder
the solid oak
" Her crashing ribs divide,
She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide."

The scene of agony and despair which ensues is portrayed with affecting
minuteness and solemnity. No reckless or desperate seaman leaps over-
board, anticipating death, as in the shipwreck described by Byron ; there
are no yells or demands for intoxicating drink; calm, manly sorrow and
Christian resignation, mark the hour of horror and death. And when the
tragedy has closed, the poet's art is seen in the picturesque addition of a
troop of Grecian peasants, who, roused by the blustering tempest, repair to
the summit of Cape Colonna, and gaze down with horror on the flood and
ruin below. They descend to the beach to succour the few survivors—

" Three still alive, benumbed and faint they find,

In mournful silence on a rock reclined:
The generous natives, moved with social pain,
The feeble strangers in their arms sustain
With pitying sighs their hapless lot deplore,
And lead them trembling from the fatal shore."

With these lines, so exquisite in their simplicity and pathos, the poem
closes, like some magnificent and agitating piece of music, terminating in a

few notes of plaintive melody.

Falconer composed his poem chiefly with a view to the gratification of
his brother seamen, though they formed then, and form still, but a small
proportion of his readers. He, therefore, made a liberal use of terms of art
or technical expressions, the effect of which is to render some few passages
obscure. They do not occur, however, in the more impassioned scenes, and
their intrusion is amply compensated for by the air of truth and authenticity
which they impart to the descriptions. We are taken on board the ship,
as it were, instructed in its architecture, and witness every action of the
crew. Attention is roused by the interjection of such phrases as All hands
unmoor! Reef topsails, reef! or Starboard again ! and their purport is soon
ascertained. And all this professional lore of the poet is said to serve a
purpose of practical utility and value. The poem, according to Mr. Clarke,
" contains within itself the rudiments of navigation, if not to form a com-
plete seaman, it may certainly be considered as the grammar of his profes-
sional science. I have heard (he adds) many experienced officers declare

3
 v

xxxi MEMOIR OF FALCONER.

that the rules and maxims delivered in this poem for the conduct of a ship

in the most perilous emergency, form the best, indeed the only opinions
which a skilful mariner should adopt. We possess, therefore, a poem not
only eminent for its sublimity and pathos, but for an harmonious assemblage
of technical terms and maxims used in navigation, which a young sailor may
easily commit to memory; and also, with these, such scientific principles as

will enable him to lay a sound foundation for his future professional skill

and judgment." Poetry has seldom received or earned this praise of direct

utility, for, though Virgil embodied in his exquisite verse the rules of hus-

bandry, he never perhaps made a practical farmer. Nor would Falconer

have taken his place as a British classic, if he had not soared far beyond his

nautical precepts and description. These are only subordinate and accessory
to his power of touching the heart and painting to the eye and imagination.
In the light of his poetry the Britamiia sails with a glory not its own, and
the perils and adventures of the voyage are invested with a moral beauty
and interest. It is this blending of the ideal with the real — of the pic-

turesque and poetical with the pathetic and sublime — that constitutes the

charm of the narrative; and a poem thus founded on truth and nature,
elevated by imagination, and presenting the most affecting examples of
human suffering and moral heroism, may be said to rest on an imperishable
basis. It has survived many revolutions of taste and opinion, and unques-
tionably will be read as long as British enterprise and valour maintain their
empire on the sea.
tf. V. rVOCDS.s*
 ; :

*-
fft k
INTRODUCTION.
HILE jarring interests wake the world to arms,
And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms;

^ While Albion bids the avenging thunders roll

f Along her vassal deep from pole to pole

\ Sick of the scene, where War, with ruthless

hand,
Spreads desolation o'er the bleeding land ;

Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet's breath

Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of death

 : ;;

38 INTRODUCTION.

'Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar,

That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore,

Far other themes of deep distress to sing

Than ever trembled from the vocal string

No pomp of battle swells the exalted strain,
Nor gleaming arms ring dreadful on the plain ;

But o'er the scene, while pale remembrance weeps,

Fate with fell triumph rides upon the deeps,
Where hostile elements conflicting rise,

And lawless surges swell against the skies,

Till hope expires, and peril and dismay-

Wave their black ensigns on the watery way.
Immortal train ! who guide the maze of song.

To whom all science, arts, and arms belong

Who bid the trumpet of eternal fame
Exalt the warrior's and the poet's name,
Or in lamenting elegies express
The varied pang of exquisite distress :

If e'er with trembling hope I fondly strayed,

In life's fair morn, beneath your hallowed shade,
To hear the sweetly-mournful lute complain,
And melt the heart with ecstasy of pain,
Or listen to the enchanting voice of love,
While all Elysium warbled through the grove ;

Oh by! the hollow blast that moans around,

That sweeps the wild harp with a plaintive sound ;

By the long surge that foams through yonder cave,

Whose vaults remurmur to the roaring wave

With living colours give my verse to glow,
The sad memorial of a tale of woe !
 ;

INTRODUCTION. 39

A scene from dumb oblivion to restore,

To fame unknown, and new to epic lore !

Alas ! neglected by the sacred Nine,

Their suppliant feels no genial ray divine :

Ah ! will they leave Pieria's happy shore

To plough the tide where wintry tempests roar %

Or shall a youth approach their hallowed fane,

Stranger to Phoebus and the tuneful train %

Far from the Muses' academic grove

'Twas his the vast and trackless deep to rove ;

Alternate change of climates has he known,

And felt the fierce extremes of either zone :

Where polar skies congeal the eternal snow,

Or equinoctial suns for ever glow,

Smote by the freezing or the scorching blast,

" A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast," *

From regions where Peruvian billows roar,

To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador

From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains !

Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains,

To where the Isthmus, t laved by adverse tides,

Atlantic and Pacific seas divides.

But while he measured o'er the painful race

In fortune's wild illimitable chase,
Adversity, companion of his way,
Still o'er the victim hung with iron sway,
Bade new distresses every instant grow,

Marking each change of place with change of woe :

* Shakspeare's Henry IV., act iiL f Darien.

 ; : —

40 INTRODUCTION.

In regions where the Almighty's chastening hand

With livid pestilence afflicts the land

Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year,

Parent of want and misery severe ;

Or where, all-dreadful in the embattled line,

The hostile ships in flaming combat join ;

Where the torn vessel wind and wave assail,

Till o'er her crew distress and death prevail ;

Such joyless toil in early youth endured,

The expanding dawn of mental day obscured,

Each genial passion of the soul oppressed,

And quenched the ardour kindling in his breast.

Then let not censure, with malignant joy,

The harvest of his humble hope destroy !

His verse no laurel wreath attempts to claim,

Nor sculptured brass to tell the poet's name.

If terms uncouth and jarring phrases wound

The softer sense with inharmonious sound,
Yet here let listening sympathy prevail,

While conscious Truth unfolds her piteous tale !

And lo ! the power that wakes the eventful song

Hastes hither from Lethean banks along
She sweeps the gloom, and rushing on the sight,

Spreads o'er the kindling scene propitious light.

In her right hand an ample roll appears,

Fraught with long annals of preceding years,

With every wise and noble art of man,
Since first the circling hours their course began ;

Her left a silver wand on high displayed,

Whose magic touch dispels oblivion's shade.
 ; — ; ;

INTRODUCTION. 4*

Pensive her look ; on radiant wings that glow

Like Juno's birds, or Iris's flaming bow,
She sails ; and swifter than the course of light

Directs her rapid intellectual flight.

The fugitive ideas she restores,

And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores

To things long past a second date she gives,

And hoary time from her fresh youth receives \

Congenial sister of immortal Fame,

She shares her power, and Memory is her name.
O first-born daughter of primeval time !

By whom transmitted down in every clime

The deeds of ages long elapsed are known,

And blazoned glories spread from zone to zone

Whose magic breath dispels the mental night,
And o'er the obscured idea pours the light

Say on what seas, for thou alone canst tell,

What dire mishap a fated ship befell,

Assailed by tempests, girt with hostile shores ?

Arise ! approach ! unlock thy treasured stores !

Full on my soul the dreadful scene display,

And give its latent horrors to the day.

 THE ARGUMENT.

I. Retrospect of the Voyage— Arrival at Candia — State of that Island— Season of the

Year described. — II. Character of the Master, and his Officers, Albert, Rodmond, and

Arion— Palemon, Son to the Owner of the Ship— Attachment of Palemon to Anna, the

Daughter of Albert— Noon.— III. Palemon's History.— IV. Sunset— Midnight— Arion's

Dream — Unmoor by Moonlight — Morning— Sun's Azimuth taken — P>eautiful Appearance

of che Ship, as seen by the Natives from the Shore.
 >> Canto Jirst
SHIP from Egypt, o'er the deep impelled

By guiding winds, her course for Venice held :

Of famed Britannia were the gallant crew,

And from that isle her name the vessel drew;
The wayward steps of Fortune, that delude

Full oft to ruin, eager they pursued ;

And, dazzled by her visionary glare,

Advanced incautious of each fatal snare,

 : ; ;; ; ;; ;

46 THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto I.

Though warned full oft the slippery track to shun,

Yet Hope, with flattering voice, betrayed them on.

Beguiled to danger thus, they left behind

The scene of peace, and social joy resigned.
Long absent they from friends and native home
The cheerless ocean were inured to roam
Yet Heaven, in pity to severe distress,

Had crowned each painful voyage with success

Still, to compensate toils and hazards past,

Restored them to maternal plains at last.

Thrice had the sun, to rule the varying year,

Across the equator rolled his flaming sphere,
Since last the vessel spread her ample sail

From Albion's coast, obsequious to the gale

She o'er the spacious flood, from shore to shore,

Unwearying wafted her commercial store

The richest ports of Afric she had viewed,

Thence to fair Italy her course pursued

Had left behind Trinacria's burning isle,

And visited the margin of the Nile :

And now, that winter deepens round the pole,

The circling voyage hastens to its goal

They, blind to fate's inevitable law,

No dark event to blast their hope foresaw,

But from gay Venice, soon expect to steer
For Britain's coast, and dread no perils near
Inflamed by hope, their throbbing hearts elate,

Ideal pleasures vainly antedate :

Already British coasts appear to rise,

The chalky cliffs salute their longing eyes

 ; ;

Canto /] THE SHIPWRECK. 47

Each to his breast, where floods of rapture roll,

Embracing strains the mistress of his soul

Nor less o'erjoyed, with sympathetic truth,

Each faithful maid expects the approaching youth.
In distant souls congenial passions glow,
And mutual feelings mutual bliss bestow :

Such shadowy happiness their thoughts employ

Illusion all, and visionary joy !

Thus time elapsed, while o'er the pathless tide

Their ship through Grecian seas the pilots guide.

Occasion called to touch at Candia's shore,

Which, blest with favouring winds, they soon ex-

plore ;

The haven enter, borne before the gale,

Despatch their commerce, and prepare to sail.

Eternal powers ! what ruins from afar

Mark the fell track of desolating war :

 ; ; — ; ;

48 THE SHIPWRECK, [Canto I.

Here arts and commerce with auspicious reign

Once breathed sweet influence on the happy
plain

While o'er the lawn, with dance and festive song,

Young Pleasure led the jocund hours along.

In gay luxuriance Ceres too was seen
To crown the valleys with eternal green :

For wealth, for valour, courted and revered,

What Albion is, fair Candia then appeared.
Ah who
! the flight of ages can revoke 1

The free-born spirit of her sons is broke

They bow to Ottoman's imperious yoke.
No longer fame the drooping heart inspires,

For stern oppression quenched its genial fires :

Though still her fields, with golden harvests crowned,

Supply the barren shores of Greece around,
Sharp penury afflicts these wretched isles,

There hope ne'er dawns, and pleasure never smiles.

The vassal wretch contented drags his chain,

And hears his famished babes lament in vain.

These eyes have seen the dull reluctant soil

A seventh year mock the weary labourer's toil.

No blooming Venus, on the desert shore,

Now views with triumph captive gods adore ;

No lovely Helens now with fatal charms

Excite the avenging chiefs of Greece to arms
No fair Penelopes enchant the eye,
For whom contending kings were proud to die
Here sullen beauty sheds a twilight ray,

While sorrow bids her vernal bloom decay :

 : -

Canto /.] THE SFIIPWRECK. 49

Those charms, so long renowned in classic strains,

Had dimly shone on Albion's happier plains !

Now in the southern hemisphere, the sun

Through the bright Virgin, and the Scales, had run,

And on the Ecliptic wheeled his winding way,

Till the fierce Scorpion felt his flaming ray.

Four days becalmed the vessel here remains,

And yet no hopes of aiding wind obtains;

For sickening vapours lull the air to sleep,

And not a breeze awakes the silent deep

This, when the autumnal equinox is o'er,

And Phoebus in the north declines no more,

The watchful mariner, whom Heaven informs,

Oft deems the prelude of approaching storms.

No dread of storms the master's soul restrain,
A captive fettered to the oar of gain :

4
 ; : ;

50 THE SHIPWRECK. \Canto I.

His anxious heart, impatient of delay,

Expects the winds to sail from Candia's bay,

Determined, from whatever point they rise,

To trust his fortune to the seas and skies.

Thou living ray of intellectual lire,

Whose voluntary gleams my verse inspire,

Ere yet the deepening incidents prevail,

Till roused attention feel our plaintive tale,

Record whom chief among the gallant crew

The unblest pursuit of fortune hither drew :

Can sons of Neptune, generous, brave, and bold,

In pain and hazard toil for sordid gold % —
They can ! for gold too oft with magic art

Can rule the passions and corrupt the heart

This crowns the prosperous villain with applause,

To whom in vain sad merit pleads her cause

This strews with roses life's perplexing road,

And leads the way to pleasure's soft abode

This spreads with slaughtered heaps the bloody
plain,

And pours adventurous thousands o'er the main.

II. The stately ship, with all her daring band,

To skilful Albert owned the chief command :

Though trained in boisterous elements, his mind

Was yet by soft humanity refined;
Each joy of wedded love at home he knew,
Abroad, confest the father of his crew !

Brave, liberal, just ! the calm domestic scene

Had o'er his temper breathed a gay serene :

 : ; : ;; ;; 1

Canto I. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 5

Him science taught by mystic lore to trace

The planets wheeling in eternal race;

To mark the ship in floating balance held,

By earth attracted, and by seas repelled

Or point her devious track through climes unknown
That leads to every shore and every zone.
He saw the moon through heaven's blue conclave glide,

And into motion charm the expanding tide,

While earth impetuous round her axle rolls,

Exalts her watery zone, and sinks the poles

Light and attraction, from their genial source,

He saw still wandering with diminished force
While on the margin of declining day
Night's shadowy cone reluctant melts away.

Inured to peril, with unconquered soul,

The chief beheld tempestuous oceans roll

O'er the wild surge, when dismal shades preside,

His equal skill the lonely bark could guide

His genius, ever for the event prepared,

Rose with the storm, and all its dangers shared.

Rodmond the next degree to Albert bore,

A hardy son of England's farthest shore,

Where bleak Northumbria pours her savage train

In sable squadrons o'er the northern main ;

That, with her pitchy entrails stored, resort

A sooty tribe to fair Augusta's port
Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands,

They claim the danger, proud of skilful bands

For while with darkling course their vessels sweep
The winding shore, or plough the faithless deep,
 ; : :

THE SHIPWRECK. [Can/o L

O'er bar,* and shelf, the watery path they sound

With dexterous arm, sagacious of the ground :

Fearless they combat every hostile wind,

Wheeling in mazy tracks, with course inclined.

Expert to moor where terrors line the road,

Or win the anchor from its dark abode

But drooping, and relaxed, in climes afar,

Tumultuous and undisciplined in war.

Such Rodmond was ; by learning unrefined

That oft enlightens to corrupt the mind.

Boist'rous of manners ; trained in early youth

To scenes that shame the conscious cheek of truth ;

To scenes that nature's struggling voice control,

And freeze compassion rising in the soul
Where the grim hell-hounds prowling round the shore

With foul intent the stranded bark explore ;

Deaf to the voice of woe, her decks they board,

While tardy justice slumbers o'er her sword.

The indignant Muse, severely taught to feel,

Shrinks from a theme she blushes to reveal.

Too oft example, armed with poisons fell,

Pollutes the shrine where Mercy loves to dwell

Thus Rodmond, trained by this unhallowed crew,

The sacred social passions never knew.

Unskilled to argue, in dispute yet loud,

Bold without caution, without honours proud ;

* A bar is known, in hydrography, to gerous. A shelf, or shelve, so called from

be a mass of earth, or sand, that has been the Saxon Schylf, is a name given to any
collected by the surge of the sea, at the dangerous shallows, sand banks, or rocks,
entrance of a river or haven, so as to lying immediately under the surface of the
render navigation difficult and often dan- water.
Canto 1] THE SHIPWRECK. 53

In art unschooled, each veteran rule he prized,

And all improvement haughtily despised.
Yet, though full oft to future perils blind,

With skill superior glowed his daring mind,

Through snares of death the reeling bark to guide,

When midnight shades involve the raging tide.

To Rodmond next in order of command
Succeeds the youngest of our naval band :

But what avails it to record a name

That courts no rank among the sons of fame ;

Whose vital spring had just begun to bloom

When o'er it sorrow spread her sickening gloom 1

While yet a stripling, oft with fond alarms

His bosom danced to nature's boundless charms ;

On him fair science dawned in happier hour,

Awakening into bloom young fancy's flower :

But frowning fortune with untimely blast

The blossom withered, and the dawn o'ercast.

Forlorn of heart, and by severe decree

Condemned reluctant to the faithless sea,

With long farewell he left the laurel grove

Where science and the tuneful sisters rove,

Hither he wandered, anxious to explore

now no more
Antiquities of nations ;

To penetrate each distant realm unknown,

And range excursive o'er the untravelled zone.
In vain : — for rude Adversity's command
Still on the margin of each famous land,
With unrelenting ire his steps opposed,
And every gate of hope against him closed.
 ; ! ; ;

54 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto I.

Permit my verse, ye blessed Pierian train

To call Arion this ill-fated swain

For like that bard unhappy, on his head

Malignant stars their hostile influence shed.

Both in lamenting numbers, o'er the deep

With conscious anguish taught the harp to weep
And both the raging surge in safety bore
Amid destruction, panting to the shore.
This last, our tragic story from the wave
Of dark oblivion haply yet may save ;

With genuine sympathy may yet complain,

While sad remembrance bleeds at every vein.

These, chief among the ships conducting train,

Her path explored along the deep domain

Trained to command, and range the swelling sail

Whose varying force conforms to every gale.

Charged with the commerce, hither also came

A gallant youth, Palemon was his name :

A father's stern resentment doomed to prove,

He came the victim of unhappy love !

His heart for Albert's beauteous daughter bled,

For her a sacred flame his bosom fed :

Nor let the wretched slaves of folly scorn

This genuine passion, Nature's eldest born !

Twas his with lasting anguish to complain,

While blooming Anna mourned the cause in vain.

Graceful of form, by nature taught to please,

Of power to melt the female breast with ease ;

To her Palemon told his tender tale,

Soft as the voice of Summer's evening gale :

 :

Canto I. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 55

His soul, where moral truth spontaneous grew,

No guilty wish, no cruel passion knew

Though tremblingly alive to Nature's laws,

Yet ever firm to Honour's sacred cause ;

O'erjoyed, he saw her lovely eyes relent,

The blushing maiden smiled with sweet consent.

 ; ; ;

56 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto I

Oft in the mazes of a neighbouring grove

Unheard they breathed alternate vows of love :

By fond society their passion grew,

Like the young blossom fed with vernal dew

While their chaste souls possessed the pleasing pains

That Truth improves, and Virtue ne'er restrains.

In evil hour the officious tongue of Fame

Betrayed the secret of their mutual flame.
With grief and anger struggling in his breast

Palemon's father heard the tale confessed ;

Long had he listened with suspicion's ear,

And learnt, sagacious, this event to fear.

Too well, fair youth ! thy liberal heart he knew

A heart to nature's warm impressions true :

Full oft his wisdom strove with fruitless toil

With avarice to pollute that generous soil

That soil, impregnated with nobler seed,

Refused the culture of so rank a weed.
Elate with wealth in active commerce won,
And basking in the smile of fortune's sun ;

(For many freighted ships from shore to shore,

Their wealthy charge by his appointment bore ;)

W^ith scorn the parent eyed the lowly shade

That veiled the beauties of this charming maid.

Indignant he rebuked the enamoured boy,
The flattering promise of his future joy ;

He soothed and menaced, anxious to reclaim

This hopeless passion, or divert its aim :

Oft led the youth where circling joys delight

The ravished sense, or beauty charms the sight.
 ; ; — ;;

Canto I] THE SHIPWRECK. 57

With all her powers enchanting Music failed,

And Pleasure's siren voice no more prevailed.

Long with unequal art, in vain he strove

To quench the ethereal flame of ardent Love :

The merchant, kindling then with proud disdain,

In look, and voice, assumed a harsher strain.

In absence now his only hope remained

And such the stern decree his will ordained :

Deep anguish, while Palemon heard his doom,

Drew o'er his lovely face a saddening gloom ;

High beat his heart, fast flowed the unbidden

tear,

His bosom heaved with agony severe ;

In vain with bitter sorrow he repined,

No tender pity touched that sordid mind
To thee, brave Albert ! was the charge consigned.
The stately ship, forsaking England's shore,

To regions far remote Palemon bore.

Incapable of change, the unhappy youth

Still loved fair Anna with eternal truth

Still Anna's image swims before his sight

In fleeting vision through the restless night
From clime to clime an exile doomed to roam,

His heart still panted for its secret home.

The moon had circled twice her wayward zone,
To him since young Arion first was known
Who wandering here through many a scene renowned,
In Alexandria's port the vessel found ;

Where, anxious to review his native shore,

He on the roaring wave embarked once more.
 ;

58 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto I.

Oft by pale Cynthia's melancholy light

With him Palemon kept the watch of night,
In whose sad bosom many a sigh suppressed

Some painful secret of the soul confessed :

Perhaps Arion soon the cause divined,

Though shunning still to probe a wounded
mind
He felt the chastity of silent woe,

Though glad the balm of comfort to bestow.

He, with Palemon, oft recounted o'er

The tales of hapless love in ancient lore,

Recalled to memory by the adjacent shore :

The scene thus present, and its story known,

The lover sighed for sorrows not his own.

Thus, though a recent date their friendship bore,

Soon the ripe metal owned the quickening ore;

For in one tide their passions seemed to roll,

By kindred age and sympathy of soul.

These o'er the inferior naval train preside,

The course determine, or the commerce guide:

O'er all the rest, an undistinguished crew,

Her wing of deepest shade Oblivion drew.

A sullen languor still the skies oppressed,

And held the unwilling ship in strong arrest:

High in his chariot glowed the lamp of day,
O'er Ida flaming with meridian ray,
Relaxed from toil, the sailors range the shore,

Where famine, war, and storm are felt no more;

The hour to social pleasure they resign,

And black remembrance drown in generous wine.

 ; ; — : : !:

Canto I] THE SHIPWRECK. 59

On deck, beneath the shading canvas spread,

Rodmond a rueful tale of wonders read,
Of dragons roaring on the enchanted coast;

The hideous goblin, and the yelling ghost

But with Arion, from the sultry heat

Of noon, Palemon sought a cool retreat

And lo ! the shore with mournful prospects crowned,

The rampart torn with many a fatal wound,

The ruined bulwark tottering o'er the strand,
Bewail the stroke of war's tremendous hand
What scenes of woe this hapless Isle overspread

Where late thrice fifty thousand warriors bled.

Full twice twelve summers were yon towers assailed,

Till barbarous Ottoman at last prevailed;

While thundering mines the lovely plains o'erturned,

While heroes fell, and domes and temples burned.*

III. But now before them happier scenes arise,

Elysian vales salute their ravished eyes

Olive and cedar formed a grateful shade,

Where light with gay romantic error strayed.
The myrtles here with fond caresses twine,

There, rich with nectar, melts the pregnant vine

And lo ! the stream renowned in classic song,

Sad Lethe, glides the silent vale along.

On mossy banks, beneath the citron grove,

The youthful wanderers found a wild alcove;

* These remarks allude to the ever-me- being then considered as impregnable, and
morable Siege of Candia, which was taken esteemed the most formidable fortress in
from the Venetians by the Turks in 1669 the universe;
 : —

60 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto I.

Soft o'er the fairy region languor stole,

And with sweet melancholy charmed the soul.

Here first Palemon, while his pensive mind

For consolation on his friend reclined,

In pity's bleeding bosom poured the stream

Of love's soft anguish, and of grief supreme

" Too true thy words ! by sweet remembrance taught,

My heart in secret bleeds with tender thought;

In vain it courts the solitary shade,

By every action, every look betrayed.

The pride of generous woe disdains appeal

To hearts that unrelenting frosts congeal

Yet sure, if right Palemon can divine,

The sense of gentle pity dwells' in thine.

Yes ! all his cares thy sympathy shall know,

And prove the kind companion of his woe.

"Albert thou know'st with skill and science graced:
In humble station though by fortune placed,
Yet never seaman more serenely brave
Led Britain's conquering squadrons o'er the wave:
Where full in view Augusta's spires are seen,
With flowery lawns and waving woods between,
A peaceful dwelling stands in modest pride,

Where Thames, slow winding, rolls his ample tide.

There live the hope and pleasure of his life,

A pious daughter, and a faithful wife.

For his return with fond officious care

Still every grateful object these prepare;
Whatever can allure the smell or sight,

Or wake the drooping spirits to delight.

 : !; ; :

Canto 7.] THE SHIPWRECK. 61

" This blooming maid in Virtue's path to guide,

The admiring parents all their care applied;

Her spotless soul, to soft affection trained,

No vice untuned, no sickening folly stained :

Not fairer grows the lily of the vale

Whose bosom opens to the vernal gale

Her eyes, unconscious of their fatal charms,

Thrilled every heart with exquisite alarms ;

Her face, in beauty's sweet attraction dressed,

The smile of maiden innocence expressed

While health, that rises with the new-born day,

Breathed o'er her cheek the softest blush of May
Still in her look complacence smiled serene
She moved the charmer of the rural scene
" 'Twas at that season when the fields resume

Their loveliest hues, arrayed in vernal bloom;

 ; ; ; !: : ;

62 THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto /.

Yon ship, rich freighted from the Italian shore,

To Thames' fair banks her costly tribute bore

While thus my father saw his ample hoard
From this return, with recent treasures stored;
Me, with affairs of commerce charged, he sent
To Albert's humble mansion — soon I went
Too soon, alas unconscious
! of the event.
There, struck with sweet surprise and silent awe,
The gentle mistress of my hopes I saw
There, wounded first by Love's resistless arms,

My glowing bosom throbbed with strange alarms:

My ever charming Anna! who alone
Can all the frowns of cruel fate atone

Oh ! while all-conscious memory holds her power,

Can I forget that sweetly-painful hour
When from those eyes, with lovely lightning fraught,
My fluttering spirits first the infection caught ?
W hen,
T
as I gazed, my faltering tongue betrayed
The heart's quick tumults, or refused its aid;

While the dim light my ravished eyes forsook,

And every limb unstrung with terror shook.

With all her powers dissenting Reason strove
To tame at first the kindling flame of Love
She strove in vain; — subdued by charms divine,

My soul a victim fell at beauty's shrine.

Oft from the din of bustling life I strayed,

In happier scenes to see my lovely maid

Full oft, where Thames his wandering current

leads,

We roved at evening hour through flowery meads

 63
Canto /.]
THE SHIPWRECK.

heart's soft anguish

I revealed,
There, while my
To her with tender sighs my hope appealed :

While the sweet nymph my faithful tale believed,

breast with secret
tumult heaved :

Her snowy
youth,
scenes from earliest
For, trained in rural
innocence, and truth.
Nature was hers, and
art,
city damsel's
She never knew the
Whose frothy pertness charms the vacant heart-
 : :

64 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto J.

My suit prevailed ! for Love informed my tongue,

And on his votary's lips persuasion hung.
Her eyes with conscious sympathy withdrew,
And o'er her cheek the rosy current flew.
Thrice happy hours ! where with no dark allay

Life's fairest sunshine gilds the vernal day

For here the sigh that soft affection heaves,

From stings of sharper woe the soul relieves.

Elysian scenes ! too happy long to last,

Too soon a storm the smiling dawn o'ercast;

Too soon some demon to my father bore
The tidings that his heart with anguish tore.
My pride to kindle, with dissuasive voice

Awhile he laboured to degrade my choice;

Then, in the whirling wave of Pleasure, sought

From its loved object to divert my thought.

With equal hope he might attempt to bind

In chains of adamant the lawless wind;

For Love had aimed the fatal shaft too sure,

Hope fed the wound, and Absence knew no cure.

With alienated look, each art he saw

Still baffled by superior Nature's law.

His anxious mind on various schemes revolved,

At last on cruel exile he resolved
The rigorous doom was fixed ; alas ! how vain,

To him of tender anguish to complain.

His soul, that never love's sweet influence felt,

By social sympathy could never melt;

With stern command to Albert's charge he gave
To waft Palemon o'er the distant wave.
 ;; : !

Canto /.]. THE SHIPWRECK. 65

" The ship was laden and prepared to sail,

And only waited now the leading gale:

'Twas ours, in that sad period, first to prove

The heart-felt torments of despairing love;
The impatient wish that never feels repose,

Desire that with perpetual current flows,

The fluctuating pangs of hope and fear,

Joy distant still, and sorrow ever near.

Thus, while the pangs of thought severer grew,

The western breezes inauspicious blew,
Hastening the moment of our last adieu.

The vessel parted on the falling tide,

Yet time one sacred hour to love supplied

The night was silent, and advancing fast,

The moon o er Thames her

?

silver mantle cast;

Impatient hope the midnight path explored,
And led me to the nymph my soul adored.

Soon her quick footsteps struck my listening ear,

She came confessed ! the lovely maid drew near

But, ah ! what force of language can impart
The impetuous joy that glowed in either heart?

O ye! whose melting hearts are formed to prove

The trembling ecstasies of genuine love

When with delicious agony, the thought

Is to the verge of high delirium wrought

Your secret sympathy alone can tell

What raptures then the throbbing bosom swell;

O'er all the nerves what tender tumults roll,

While love with sweet enchantment melts the

soul.

5
 ;! — ;

66 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto I.

" In transport lost, by trembling hope impressed,

The blushing virgin sunk upon my breast,

While hers congenial beat with fond alarms;

Dissolving softness ! paradise of charms

Flashed from our eyes, in warm transfusion flew

Qur blending spirits, that each other drew!

O bliss supreme ! where Virtue's self can melt

With joys that guilty Pleasure never felt;

Formed to refine the thought with chaste desire,

•
And kindle sweet Affection's purest fire.

'
Ah ! wherefore should my hopeless love, (she cries,

While sorrow burst with interrupting sighs,)

For ever destined to lament in vain,

Such flattering, fond ideas entertain]
My heart, through scenes of fair illusion, strayed

To joys decreed for some superior maid.

'Tis mine abandoned to severe distress

Still to complain, and never hope redress

Go then, dear youth thy father's rage atone,
!

And let this tortured bosom beat alone.

The hovering anger yet thou may'st appease

Go then, dear youth ! nor tempt the faithless seas.

Find out some happier maid, whose equal charms,

With fortune's fairer jo)'S, may bless thy arms4.

Where, smiling o'er thee with indulgent ray,

Prosperity shall hail each new-born day:

Too well thou knowest good Albert's niggard fate

111 fitted to sustain thy father's hate.

Go then, I charge thee by thy generous love,

That fatal to my father thus may prove

 ; : ! : :

Canto /.] THE SHIPWRECK. 67

On me alone let dark affliction fall,

Whose heart for thee will gladly suffer all.

Then haste thee hence, Palemon, ere too late,

Nor rashly hope to brave opposing fate.'

" She ceased : while anguish in her angel-face

O'er all her beauties showered celestial grace

Not Helen, in her bridal charms arrayed,
Was half so lovely as this gentle maid.
6
O soul of all my wishes ! (I replied)

Can that soft fabric stem affliction's tide?

Canst thou, fair emblem of exalted truth,

To sorrow doom the summer of thy youth;

And I, perfidious ail that sweetness see !

Consigned to lasting misery for me?

Sooner this moment may the eternal doom
Palemon in the silent earth entomb
Attest, thou moon, fair regent of the night

Whose lustre sickens at this mournful sight

By all the pangs divided lovers feel,

Which sweet possession only knows to heal;

By all the horrors brooding o'er the deep,

Where fate and ruin sad dominion keep;

Though tyrant duty o'er me threatening stands,

And claims obedience to her stern commands,

Should fortune cruel or auspicious prove,
Her smile, or frown, shall never change my love;

My heart, that now must every joy resign,

Incapable of change, is only thine.
" '
Oh, cease to weep ! this storm will yet decay,

And the sad clouds of sorrow melt away

 ! —

68 THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto I

While through the rugged path of life we go,

All mortals taste the bitter draught of woe.

The famed and great, decreed to equal pain,

Full oft in splendid wretchedness complain:

For this, prosperity, with brighter ray,

In smiling contrast gilds our vital day.

Thou too, sweet maid ! ere twice ten months are o'er,

Shalt hail Palemon to his native shore,

Where never interest shall divide us more.'

" Her struggling soul, overwhelmed with tender

grief,

Now found an interval of short relief:

So melts the surface of the frozen stream

Beneath the wintry sun's departing beam.
With warning haste the shades of night withdrew,
And gave the signal of a sad adieu.

As on my neck the afflicted maiden hung,

A thousand racking doubts her spirit wrung:
She wept the terrors of the fearful wave,

Too oft, alas! the wandering lover's grave;

With soft persuasion I dispelled her fear,

And from her cheek beguiled the falling tear,

While dying fondness languished in her eyes

She poured her soul to Heaven in suppliant sighs:

6
Look down with pity, O ye powers above
Who hear the sad complaint of bleeding love;
Ye, who the secret laws of fate explore,

Alone can tell if he returns no more :

Or if the hour of future joy remain

Long-wishecl atonement of long-suffered pain,

Canto Z] THE SHIPWRECK. 69

Bid every guardian-minister attend,

And from all ill the much-loved youth defend!*

With grief o'erwhelmed we parted twice in vain,

And, urged by strong attraction, met again.

At last, by cruel fortune torn apart,

While tender passion beat in either heart,

Our eyes transfixed with agonizing look,

One sad farewell, one last embrace we took.

Forlorn of hope the lovely maid I left,

Pensive and pale, of every joy bereft:

She to her silent couch retired to weep,

Whilst I embark'd, in sadness, on the deep."
His tale thus closed, from sympathy of grief
Palemon's bosom felt a sweet relief:
To mutual friendship thus sincerely true,

No secret wish, or fear, their bosoms knew;

 — :

7o THE SHIPWRECK. \Cantc /.

In mutual hazards oft severely tried,

Nor hope, nor danger, could their love divide.*

PK*
Ye tender maids ! in whose pathetic souls

Compassion's sacred stream impetuous rolls,

Whose warm affections exquisitely feel

The secret wound you tremble to reveal;

Ah may no ! wanderer of the stormy main

Pour through your breasts the soft delicious bane;
May never fatal tenderness approve
The fond effusions of their ardent love

* This and the three preceding lines were In secret long bewails his cruel fate,
deleted in the third edition, and the follow- With fond remembrance of his winged
ing (which seem worthy of preservation) mate;
substituted :
grown
Till familiar with a foreign train,
" The hapless bird, thus ravished from the Composed at length his sadly-warbling
skies, strain
Where all forlorn his loved companion In sweet oblivion charms the sense of
/lies, pain."
 ! ; : ; ::

Canto /.] THE SHIPWRECK. 7 J

Oh! warned by friendship's counsel, learn to

shun
The fatal path where thousands are undone!
Now, as the youths, returning o'er the plain,

Approached the lonely margin of the main,

First, with attention roused, Arion eyed
The graceful lover, formed in nature's pride

His frame the happiest symmetry displayed,

And locks of waving gold his neck arrayed

In every look the Paphian graces shine

Soft breathing o'er his cheek their bloom divine:

With lightened heart he smiled serenely gay,

Like young Adonis, or the son of May.
Not Cytherea from a fairer swain
Received her apple on the Trojan plain.

IV. The sun's bright orb, declining all serene,

Now glanced obliquely o'er the woodland scene.

Creation smiles around; on every spray
The warbling birds exalt their evening lay

Blithe skipping o'er yon hill, the fleecy train

Join the deep chorus of the lowing plain;

The golden lime and orange there were seen

On fragrant branches of perpetual green

The crystal streams, that velvet meadows lave,

To the green ocean roll with chiding wave.

The glassy ocean hushed, forgets to roar,

But trembling murmurs on the sandy shore

And lo ! his surface lovely to behold
Glows in the west, a sea of living gold
 ;

72 THE SHIPWRECK. \Canto L

While, all above, a thousand liveries gay

The skies with pomp ineffable array.

Arabian sweets perfume the happy plains

Above, beneath, around, enchantment reigns!
While glowing Vesper leads the starry train,

And Night slow draws her veil o'er land and main,
Emerging clouds the azure east invade,

And wrap the lucid spheres in gradual shade:

 : : : —

Canto L] THE SHIPWRECK. .

73

While yet the songsters of the vocal grove,

With dying numbers tune the soul to love :

With joyful eyes the attentive master sees

The auspicious omens of an eastern breeze.

Round the charged bowl the sailors form a ring;

By turns recount the wondrous tale, or sing,

As love, or battle, hardships of the main,

Or genial wine, awake the homely strain

Then some the watch of night alternate keep,

The rest lie buried in oblivious sleep.

Deep midnight now involves the livid skies,

When eastern breezes from the shore arise

The waning moon, behind a watery shroud,

Pale glimmered o'er the long-protracted cloud;

A mighty halo round her silver throne,

With parting meteors crossed, portentous shone:

This in the troubled sky full oft prevails,

Oft deemed a signal of tempestuous gales.

While young Arion sleeps, before his sight

Tumultuous swim the visions of the night

Now blooming Anna with her happy swain

Approached the sacred hymeneal fane;
Anon, tremendous lightnings flash between,
And funeral pomp, and weeping loves are seen:

Now with Palemon, up a rocky steep,

Whose summit trembles o'er the roaring deep,

With painful step he climbed, while far above

Sweet Anna charmed them with the voice of Love;
Then sudden from the slippery height they fell,

While dreadful yawned beneath the jaws of hell

 — : :

74 THE SHIPWRECK, [Ca?ito I.

Amid this fearful trance, a thundering sound

He hears, and thrice the hollow decks rebound;
Up starting from his couch on deck he sprung,
Thrice with shrill note the boatswain's whistle rung:
"All hands unmoor!" proclaims a boisterous cry,

" All hands unmoor!" the caverned rocks reply.

Roused from repose aloft the sailors swarm,

And with their levers soon the windlass * arm
The order given, up springing with a bound
They fix the bars, and heave the windlass round,

At every turn the clanging pauls resound

Up-torn reluctant from its oozy cave
The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave.
High on the slippery masts the yards ascend,

And far abroad the canvas wings extend.

Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,

While azure radiance trembles on her sides;

The lunar rays in long reflection gleam,

With silver deluging the fluid stream.

Levant and Thracian gales alternate play,

Then in the Egyptian quarter die away.
A calm ensues: adjacent shores they dread,
The boats, with rowers manned, are sent ahead;
With cordage fastened to the lofty prow
Aloof to sea the stately ship they tow;t

* The windlass a large roller, used to

is vent those engines from rolling back or giv-
wind in the cable, or.heave up the anchor. ing way when they are employed to heave in

It is turned about by a number of long bars the cable or otherwise charged with any great
of levers, and is furnished with strong iron effort. Falconer's Marine Dictionary.}
pauls to prevent it from, recoiling. [Paul, a f Towing is chiefly used as here, when a
certain short bar of wood or iron fixed close ship for want of wind is forced toward the
to the capstern or windlass of a ship, to pre- shore, by the swell of the sea.
 :

Canto I. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 75

The nervous crew their sweeping oars extend,

And pealing shouts the shore of Candia rend

Success attends their skill! the danger's o'er!

The port is doubled, and beheld no more.

Now Morn with gradual pace advanced on high

Whitening with orient beam the twilight sky:

She comes not in refulgent pomp arrayed,

But frowning stern, and wrapt in sullen shade.

Above incumbent mists, tail Ida's* height,

Tremendous rock! emerges on the sight;

North-east, a league, the isle of Standia bears,

And westward, Freschin's woody capef appears.

In distant angles while the transient gales

Alternate blow, they trim the flagging sails;

* A mountain in the midst of Candia, or f Cape Freschin, or Frescia, is the east-

ancient Crete. ernmost part of two projecting points of land
on the northern coast of Candia.
 : ;

76 THE SHIPWRECK. [Can/o I.

The drowsy air attentive to retain,

As from unnumbered points it sweeps the main.

Now swelling stud-sails* on each side extend,

Then stay-sails sidelong to the breeze ascend;

While all to court the veering winds are placed,

With yards alternate square, and sharply braced.
The dim horizon lowering vapours shroud,
And blot the sun yet struggling in the cloud;

Through the wide atmosphere condensed with haze,

His glaring orb emits a sanguine blaze,
The pilots now their azimuth t attend,
On which all courses, duly formed, depend :

The compass placed to catch the rising ray,

The quadrant's shadows studious they survey;

Along the arch the gradual index slides,

While Phoebus down the vertic-circle glides

Now seen on ocean's utmost verge to swim,

He sweeps it vibrant with his nether limb.

Thus height and polar distance are obtained,

Then latitude, and declination, gained;

In chiliads next the analogy is sought,

And on the sinical triangle wrought

By this magnetic variance is explored,

Just angles known, and polar truth restored.

The natives, whili the ship departs their land,

Ashore with admiration gazing stand.

* Stud, or sttidding-sails, are light sails, a Stay, when the wind crosses the ship's
which are extended in fine weather and fair course either directly or obliquely.
winds beyond the skirts of the principal t The operation of taking the sun's azi-
sails. Stay-sails are three-cornered sails, muth, in order to discover the eastern or
which are hoisted up on a strong rope called western variation of the magnetical needle.
 — ; :

Canto /] THE SHIPWRECK. 77

Majestically slow before the breeze

She moved triumphant o'er the yielding seas :

*

Her bottom through translucent waters shone,

White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon

The bending wales t their contrast next displayed,
All fore and aft in polished jet arrayed.

* In third edition :
— " In silent pomp she appears light and graceful on the water
marches on the seas." they are usually distinguished into the main-
t Before the art of coppering ships' wale and the channel-wale.
bottoms was discovered, they were painted [In third edition the wales are graphically
white. The wales are the strong flanks depicted :

which extend along a ship's side, at differ- " The wales, that close above in contrast
ent heights, throughout her whole length, shone,
and form the curves by which a vessel Clasp the longfabric with a jetty zone."]
 8 ; ; —: !

7 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto L

Britannia, riding awful on the prow,

Gazed o'er the vassal waves that rolled below
Where'er she moved the vassal waves were seen
To yield obsequious, and confess their queen.

The imperial trident graced her dexter hand,

Of power to rule the surge, like Moses' wand;

The eternal empire of the main to keep,

And guide her squadrons o'er the trembling deep :

Her left, propitious, bore a mystic shield,

Around whose margin rolls the watery field

There her bold Genius, in his floating car,

O'er the wild billow hurls the storm of war :

And lo ! the beasts that oft with jealous rage

In bloody combat met, from age to age

Tamed into Union, yoked in friendship's chain,

Draw his proud chariot round the vanquished main :

From the proud margin to the centre grew

Shelves, rocks, and whirlpools, hideous to the view.

The immortal shield from Neptune she received,

When first her head above the waters heaved
Loose floated o'er her limbs an azure vest,

A figured scutcheon glittered on her breast

There from one parent soil, for ever young, .

The blooming Rose and hardy Thistle sprung.

Around her head an oaken wreath was seen
Inwove with laurels of unfading green.

Such was the sculptured prow ; from van to rear

The artillery frowned, a black tremendous tier

Embalmed with orient gum, above the wave

The swelling sides a yellow radiance gave.
 — : ;

Canto I.] THE SHIPWRECK. 79

On the broad stern, a pencil warm and bold,

That never servile rules of art controlled,

An allegoric tale on high portrayed ;

There a young hero, here a royal maid

Fair England's Genius in the youth expressed

Her ancient foe, but now her friend confessed,

The warlike nymph with fond regard surveyed ;

No more his hostile frown her heart dismayed :

His look, that once shot terror from afar,

Like young Alcides, or the god of war,

Serene as Summer's evening skies she saw
Serene, yet firm ; though mild, impressing awe :

Her nervous arm, inured to toils severe,

Brandished the unconquered Caledonian spear :

The dreadful falchion of the hills she wore,

Sung to the harp in many a tale of yore,
That oft her rivers dyed with hostile gore.
Blue was her rocky shield ; her piercing eye
Flashed like the meteors of her native sky
Her crest high-plumed, was rough with many a scar,*
And o'er her helmet gleamed the northern star.

The warrior youth appeared of noble frame,

The hardy offspring of some Runic dame :

Loose o'er his shoulders hung the slackened bow-

Renowned in song, the terror of the foe !

The sword that oft the barbarous north defied,

The scourge of tyrants ! glittered by his side :

* [An echo of Pope's noble line :

" Old England's genius, rough with many a scar."]

 ; ! : ;;

80 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto L

Clad in refulgent arms in battle won,

The George emblazoned on his corselet shone
Fast by his side was seen a golden lyre
Pregnant with numbers of eternal fire :

Whose strings unlock the witches' midnight spell,

Or waft rapt Fancy through the gulfs of hell

Struck with contagion, kindling Fancy hears

The songs of Heaven, the music of the spheres !

Borne on Newtonian wing through air she flies,

Where other suns to other systems rise.

These front the scene conspicuous \ overhead

Albion's proud oak his filial branches spread :

While on the sea-beat shore obsequious stood

Beneath their feet, the father of the flood :

Here, the bold native of her cliffs above,

Perched by the martial maid the bird of Jove

There, on the watch, sagacious of his prey,
With eyes of fire, an English mastiff lay :

Yonder fair Commerce stretched her winged sail,

Here frowned the god that wakes the living gale.

High o'er the poop, the flattering winds unfurled

The imperial flag that rules the watery world.

Deep blushing armours all the tops invest,

And warlike trophies either quarter dressed :

Then towered the masts, the canvas swelled on high,

And waving streamers floated in the sky.

Thus the rich vessel moves in trim array,

Like some fair virgin on her bridal day

Thus, like a swan, she cleaves the watery plain,

The pride and wonder of the ^Egean main
 —

THE ARGUMENT.

I. Reflections on leaving Shore. — Favourable Breeze —Waterspout—The Dying

II.

Dolphin — Breeze freshens— Ship's rapid Progress along the Coast—Top-sails Reefed
Gale of Wind — Last Appearance, Bearing, and Distance, of Cape Spado —A Squall—Top-

Sails Double Reefed — Main-sail Split — The Ship Bears Away before the Wind ; again

Hauls upon the Wind —Another Main-sail Bent, and Set— Porpoises. — III. The Ship
Driven Out of her Course from Candia — Heavy Gale—Top-sails Furled—Top-gallant-

yards Lowered— Great Sea — Threatening Sunset—Difference of Opinion respecting the

Mode of Taking in the Main-sail — Courses Reefed— Four Seamen Lost off the Lee Main-
yard-arm —Anxiety of the Master and his Mates, on being near a Lee Shore — Mizzen

Reefed. — IV. A Tremendous Sea bursts over the Deck; itsConsequences —The Ship

Labours in Great Distress— Guns Thrown Overboard — Dismal Appearance of the Weather
—Very High and Dangerous Sea— Storm of Lightning— Severe Fatigue of the Crew at
the Pumps — Critical Situation of the Ship near the Island Falconera— Consultation and

Resolution of the Officers — Speech and Advice of Albert his Devout Address to Heaven
;

— Order Given to Bear Away—The Fore Stay-sail Hoisted and Split—The Head-yards
Braced Aback—The Mizzen-mast Cut Away.
 —

€nnio Swxmir.
DIEU ! ye pleasures of the sylvan scene,
Where Peace and calm Contentment dwell
serene :

To me, in vain, on earth's prolific soil

With summer crowned, the Elysian valleys smile ;

To me those happier scenes no joy impart,

But tantalize with hope my aching heart,
Ye tempests ! o'er my head congenial roll,

To suit the mournful music of my soul.

 ; ;: ;
! :

84 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

In black progression, lo, they hover near,

Hail social horrors ! like my fate severe :

Old Ocean hail ! beneath whose azure zone

The secret deep lies unexplored, unknown.
Approach, ye brave companions of the sea
And fearless view this awful scene with me.
Ye native guardians of your country's laws !

Ye brave assertors of her sacred cause !

The Muse invites you—judge if she depart

Unequal from the thorny rules of art.

In practice trained, and conscious of her power,

She boldly moves to meet the trying hour

Her voice attempting themes, before unknown

To music, sings distresses all her own.

II. O'er the smooth bosom of the faithless

tides,

Propelled by flattering gales, the vessel glides :

Rodmond exulting felt the auspicious wind,

And by a mystic charm its aim confined.
The thoughts of home that o'er his fancy roll,

With trembling joy dilate Palemon's soul

Hope lifts his heart, before whose vivid ray

Distress recedes, and danger melts away.

Tall Ida's summit now more distant grew,

And Jove's high hill was rising to the view

When on the larboard quarter they descry
A liquid column towering shoot on high
The foaming base the angry whirlwinds sweep,
Where curling billows rouse the fearful deep
 —
; :

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. 85

Still round and round the fluid vortex flies,

Diffusing briny vapours o'er the skies.

This vast phenomenon, whose lofty head

In Heaven immersed, embracing clouds o'erspread,
In spiral motion first, as seamen deem,
Swells, when the raging whirlwind sweeps the stream.

The swift volution, and the enormous train,

Let sages versed in Nature's lore explain

The horrid apparition still draws nigh,
And white with foam the whirling billows fly.

The guns were primed ; the vessel northward veers,

Till her black battery on the column bears :

The nitre fired ; and, while the dreadful sound

Convulsive shook the slumbering air around,

The watery volume trembling to the sky,

Burst down, a dreadful deluge from on high !

The expanding ocean trembled as it fell,

And felt with swift recoil her surges swell ;

But soon, this transient undulation o'er,

The sea subsides, the whirlwinds rage no more.

While southward now the increasing breezes veer,
Dark clouds incumbent on their wings appear
In front they view the consecrated grove
Of Cyprus, sacred once to Cretan Jove.
The thirsty canvas, all around supplied,
Still drinks un quenched the full aerial tide :

And now approaching near the lofty stern,

A shoal of sportive dolphins they discern

Beaming from burnished scales refulgent rays,

Till all the glowing ocean seems to blaze

 ; : ; ; ;! !

S6 THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto IT.

In curling wreaths they wanton on the tide,

Now bound aloft, now downward swiftly glide

Awhile beneath the waves their tracks remain,

And burn in silver streams along the liquid plain.

Soon to the sport of death the crew repair,

Dart the long lance, or spread the baited snare.

One in redoubling mazes wheels along,
And glides unhappy near the triple prong
Rodmond, unerring, o'er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends;
Unerring aimed, the missile weapon flew,

And, plunging, struck the fated victim through

The upturning points his pond'rous bulk sustain,
On deck he struggles with convulsive pain :

But while his heart the fatal javelin thrills,

And flitting life escapes in sanguine rills,

What radiant changes strike the astonished sight

What glowing hues of mingled shade and light

Not equal beauties gild the lucid west

With parting beams all o'er profusely dressed,

Not lovelier colours paint the vernal dawn

When orient dews impearl the enamelled lawn,
Than from his sides in bright suffusion flow,

That now with gold empyreal seem to glow

Now in pellucid sapphires meet the view,
And emulate the soft celestial hue
Now beam a flaming crimson on the eye,

And now assume the purple's deeper dye :

But here description clouds each shining ray,

What terms of Art can Nature's powers display ?

 ; ; ;;: ;

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. 87

Now, while on high the freshening gale she feels,

The ship beneath her lofty pressure reels :

The lighter sails, for summer winds and seas,

Are now dismissed the straining masts to ease

Swift on the deck the stud-sails all descend,

Which ready seamen from the yards unbend

The boats then hoisted in, are fixed on board,
And on the deck with fastening gripes secured.

The watchful ruler of the helm, no more

With fixed attention eyes the adjacent shore,

But by the oracle of truth below,

The wondrous magnet, guides the wayward prow.
The powerful sails with steady breezes swelled,

Swift and more swift the yielding bark impelled

Across her stem the parting waters run,
As clouds, by tempests wafted, pass the sun.

Impatient thus, she darts along the shore,

Till Ida's mount, and Jove's, are seen no more
And, while aloof from Retimo she steers,

Malacha's foreland full in front appears.

Wide o'er yon isthmus stands the cypress grove

That once inclosed the hallowed fane of Jove ;

Here, too, memorial of his name ! is found

A tomb in marble ruins on the "ground :

This gloomy tyrant, whose despotic sway

'Compelled the trembling nations to obey,
Through Greece for murder, rape, and incest known,
The Muses raised to high Olympus' throne

For oft, alas ! their venal strains adorn

The prince, whom blushing Virtue holds in scorn
 ; — ; —

88 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto IL

Still Rome and Greece record his endless fame,

And hence yon mountain yet retains his name.

But see ! in confluence borne before the blast,

Clouds rolled on clouds the dusky noon o'ercast :

The blackening ocean curls, the winds arise,

And the dark scud* in swift succession flies.

While the swoln canvas bends the masts on high,

Low in the wave the leeward cannon t lie.

The master calls to give the ship relief,

"The top-sails % lower, and form a single reef!"

Each lofty yard with slackened cordage reels

Rattle the creaking blocks and ringing wheels :

Down the tall masts the top-sails sink amain,

Are manned and reefed, then hoisted up again.

More distant grew receding Candia's shore,

And southward of the west Cape Spado bore.
Four hours the sun his high meridian throne
Had left, and o'er Atlantic regions shone
Still blacker clouds, that all the skies invade,

Draw o'er his sullied orb a dismal shade.

A squall deep lowering blots the southern sky,
Before whose boisterous breath the waters fly ;

* The scud is a name given by seamen to cannon, the lee-braces, weather-braces, &c.
the lowest and lightest clouds, which are The same term is used by Milton :

swiftly driven along the atmosphere by the " The pilot of some small night-foundered
winds. With fixed anchor, [skiff,

t When the wind crosses a ship's course, Moors by his side under the lee."
either directly or obliquely, that side of the Par. Lost, b. i. v. 204.
ship upon which it acts is termed the weather- \ The top-sails are large square sails of
side ; and the opposite one, which is then the second degree in height and magnitude.
pressed downwards, is termed the lee-side; Reefs are certain divisions or spaces by
all on one side of her is accordingly called which the principal sails are reduced when
to windward, and all on the opposite side to the wind increases and again enlarged pro-
;

leeward :hence also are derived the lee- portionably when its force abates.
 : ; — ;

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. 89

Its weight the top-sails can no more sustain

" Reef top-sails, reef!" the master calls again.

The halyards* and top-bow-lines f soon are gone,

To clue-lines and reef-tackles % next they run :

The shivering sails descend ; the yards are square

Then quick aloft the ready crew repair

The weather-earings, § and the lee, they passed,
The reefs enrolled, and every point made fast.

Their task above thus finished, they descend,

And vigilant the approaching squall attend :

It comes resistless ! and with foaming sweep

Upturns the whitening surface of the deep
In such a tempest, borne to deeds of death,
The wayward sisters scour the blasted heath.
The clouds, with ruin pregnant, now impend,
And storm and cataract tumultuous blend.
Deep, on her side, the reeling vessel lies :

"Brail up the mizzen|| quick !" the master cries,

" Man the clue-garnets !1T let the main-sheet** fly I"

It rends in thousand shivering shreds on high !

* Halyards are those ropes by which sails, and the extremities of the reefs, to the
sails are hoisted or lowered. respective yard-arms, particularly when any
f Bow-lutes are ropes fastened to the outer sail is to be close furled.
edge of square sails in three different places, || The mizzen is alarge sail of an oblong
that the windward edge of the sail may be figure^ extended upon the mizzen-mast.
bound tight forward on a side wind, in order
to keep the sail from shivering.
% Clue-garnets are the same to the main-
sail and which the clue-lines are to
fore-sail
X Chie-lines are fastened to the lower
all other square sails,, and are hauled up
corners of the square sails, for the more easy
furling of them.
when the sail is to be furled or brailed.
Reef-tackles are ropes
fastened to the edge of the sail, just beneath ** Sheets ; it is necessary in this place to
the lowest reef; and being brought down to remark that the sheets, which are universally
the deck by means of two blocks, are used mistaken by our English poets for the sails,
to facilitate the operation of reefing. are in reality the ropes that are used to ex-
§ Barings are small ropes employed to tend the clues, or lower corners of the sails,
fasten the upper corners of the principal to which they are attached.
 ; : ;

9o THE SHIPWRECK. \Canto 12.

The main-sail all in streaming ruins tore,

Loud fluttering, imitates the thunder's roar

The ship still labours in the oppressive strain,

Low bending as if ne'er to rise again.

"Bear up the helm a-weather !"* Rodmond cries;

Swift at the word the helm a-weather flies

She feels its guiding power, and veers apace,

And now the fore-sail right athwart they brace

With equal sheets restrained, the bellying sail

Spreads a broad concave to the sweeping gale.

While o'er the foam the ship impetuous flies,

The helm the attentive timoneert applies :

* The reason for putting the helm her course from one board to the other,
a-weather, or to the side next the wind, is turns her stern to windward the French
:

to make the ship veer before it, when it term is, virer vent arriere.
blows so hard that she cannot bear her side
to it any longer. Veering, or wearing, is f The helmsman, or steersman, frcm the
the operation by which a ship, in changing French timonnicr.
 : ; —;

Canto II] THE SHIPWRECK. 9*

As in pursuit, along the aerial way,

With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey,

Each motion watches of the doubtful chase,

Obliquely wheeling through the liquid space ;

So, governed by the steersman's glowing hands,

The regent helm her motion still commands.
But now, the transient squall to leeward past^

Again she rallies to the sullen blast

The helm* to starboard moves; each shivering sail

Is sharply trimmed to clasp the augmenting gale

The mizzen draws ; she springs aloof once more,

While the fore stay-sail | balances before.

The fore-sail braced obliquely to the wind,

They near the prow the extended tack % confined :

Then on the leeward sheet the seamen bend,

And haul the bow-line to the bowsprit-end.

To top-sails next they haste : the bunt-lines § gone !

Through rattling blocks the clue-lines swiftly run

The extending sheets on either side are manned, •

Abroad they come ! the fluttering sails expand

* The helm, being turned to starboard, X The main-sail and fore-sail of a ship are
or to the right side of the ship, directs the furnished with a tack on each side, which is

prow to the left, or to port, and vice versa. formed of a thick rope tapering to the end,
Hence the helm being put a starboard, having a knot wrought upon the largest ex-
when the ship is running northward, directs tremity, by which it is firmly retained in the
her prow towards the west. clue of the sail : by this means the tack is

t Called with more propriety the fore top- always fastened to windward, at the same
mast staysail: it is of a triangular shape, time that the sheet extends the sail to lee-

and runs upon the fore top-mast stay, over ward.

the bowsprit it consequently has an influ-
;

ence on the fore part of the ship, as the § Bunt-lines are ropes fastened to the
mizzen has on the hinder part ; and, when bottoms of the square sails, to draw them
thus used together, they may be said to up to the yards, when the sails are brailed
balance each other. (See also the last note or furled.
of this Canto.)
 : ; :

92 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

The yards again ascend each comrade mast,

The leeches taught the halyards are made fast,

The bow-lines hauled, and yards to starboard braced,*

And straggling ropes in pendent order placed.

The main-sail, by the squall so lately rent,

In streaming pendants flying, is unbent

With brails t refixed, another soon prepared,
Ascending, spreads along beneath the yard.
To each yard-arm the head-rope % they extend,
And soon their earings and their robans§ bend.
That task performed, they first the braces ||
slack,

Then to the chesstree drag the unwilling tack :

And, while the lee clue-garnet's lowered away,

Taught aft the sheet they tally and belay. 11

Now to the north, from Afric's burning shore,

A troop of porpoises their course explore

In curling wreaths they gambol on the tide,

Now bound aloft, now down the billow glide :

* A yard is said to be braced when it is passed through the eyelet-holes under the
turned about the most horizontally, either head-rope.
to the right or left the ropes employed in
: || Because the lee-brace confines the yard,
this service are accordingly called braces. so that the tack will not come down to its

t Brails: a general name given to all the place till the braces are cast loose. [Chess-
ropes which are employed to haul up or trees, mentioned in the next line, are thus
brail the bottoms and lower corners of the explained by Falconer in his Dictionary
great sails. "Two pieces of wood bolted perpendicu-
\ A rope is always attached to the edges larly, one on the starboard and the other on
of the sails, to strengthen, and prevent them the larboard side of the ship. They are
from rending those parts of it which are
: used to confine the clue or lower corners of
on the perpendicular or sloping edges are the mainsail for which purpose there is a
;

called leech-ropes ; that at the bottom, the hole in the upper part, through which the
foot-rope; and that on the top, or upper rope passes, that usually extends the clue of
edge, the head-rope. the sail to windward."]
§ Robans, or rope-bands, are small pieces "IT Taught implies stiff, tense, or extended

of rope, of a sufficient length to pass two Or straight and tally is a phrase particularly
;

three times about the yards, in order to fix applied to the operation of hauling aft the
to them the upper edges of the respective sheets, or drawing them towards the ship's
great sails : the robans, for this purpose, are stern. To belay, is to fasten.
 ——
: :

Canto II,] THE SHIPWRECK. 93

Their tracks awhile the hoary waves retain,

That burn in sparkling trails along the main

These fleetest coursers of the finny race,

When threatening clouds the ethereal vault deface.

Their route to leeward still sagacious form,

To shun the fury of the approaching storm.

III. Fair Candia now no more beneath her

lee

Protects the vessel from the insulting sea ;

Round her broad arms, impatient of control,

Roused from the secret deep, the billows roll

Sunk were the bulwarks of the friendly shore,

And all the scene a hostile aspect wore.

The flattering windj that late with promised aid

From Candia's bay the unwilling ship betrayed,
No longer fawns beneath the fair disguise,

But like a ruffian on his quarry flies :

Tossed on the tide, she feels the tempest blow,

And dreads the vengeance of so fell a foe
As the proud horse, with costly trappings gay,

Exulting, prances to the bloody fray ;

Spurning the ground, he glories in his might,

But reels tumultuous in the shock of fight

Ev'n so, caparisoned in gaudy pride,

The bounding vessel dances on the tide.

Fierce and more fierce the gathering tempest grew,

South, and by west, the threatening demon blew :

The ship no longer can her top-sails spread,

And every hope of fairer skies is fled.
 ; : ; :

94 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto IL

Bow-lines and halyards are cast off again,

Clue-lines hauled down, and sheets let fly amain
Embrailed each top-sail, and by braces squared,
The seamen climb aloft and man each yard
They furled the sails, and pointed to the wind
The yards, by rolling tackles* then confined,

While o'er the ship the gallant boatswain flies

Like a hoarse mastiff through the storm he cries.

Prompt to direct the unskilful still appears,

The expert he praises, and the timid cheers.

Now some, to strike top-gallant-yards f attend,

Some, travellers J up the weather-back-stays send,
At each mast-head the top-ropes § others bend.

The parrels, ||
lifts, 1F and clue-lines soon are gone,
Topped and unrigged they down the back-stays run

The yards secure along the booms** were laid,

And all the flying ropes aloft belayed.

* The rolling-tackle is an assemblage of § Top-ropes are employed to sway up or

pulleys, used to confine the yard to the lower the top-masts, top-gallant-masts, and
weather-side of the mast, and prevent the their respective yards.
former from rubbing against the latter by
|| Parrels are those bands of rope by
the fluctuating motion of the ship in a tur-
which the yards are fastened to the masts,
bulent sea.
so as to slide up and down when requisite ;

t Top-gallant-yards, which are the high- and of these there are four different
est ones in a ship, are sent down at the ap-
sorts.
proach of a heavy gale, to ease the mast-
TT Lifts are ropes which reach from each
heads.
mast-head to their respective yard-arms. A
% Travellers are iron rings furnished with
yard is said to be topped when one end of
a piece of rope, one end of which encircles
the yard is raised higher than the other, in
the ring to which it is spliced they are
:

order to lower it on deck by means of the

principally intended to facilitate the hoist-
top-ropes.
ing or bowering of the top-gallant-yards
for which purpose two of them are fixed on ** Booms are spare masts, or yards, which
each back-stay; which are long ropes that are placed in store on deck, between the
reach, on each side the ship, from the top- main and fore-mast, immediately to supply
masts (which are the second in point of the place of any that may be carried away
height) to the chains. or injured by stress of weather.
 ——

Canto 11.} THE SHIPWRECK. 95

Their sails reduced, and all the rigging clear,

Awhile the crew relax from toils severe ;

Awhile, their spirits with fatigue oppressed,

In vain expect the alternate hour of rest
But with redoubling force the tempests blow,
And watery hills in dread succession flow :

A dismal shade o'ercasts the frowning skies,

New troubles grow, new difficulties rise ;

No season this from duty to descend !

" All hands on deck" must now the storm attend.

His race performed, the sacred lamp of day
Now dipt in western clouds his parting ray :
 ; — !

96 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

His languid fires, half lost in ambient haze,

Refract along the dusk a crimson blaze ;

Till deep immerged the sickening orb descends,

And cheerless Night o'er Heaven her reign extends.

Sad evening's hour, how different from the past

No flaming pomp, no blushing glories cast,
No ray of friendly light is seen around ;

The moon and stars in hopeless shade are drowned.

The ship no longer can her courses* bear,

To reef them now becomes the master's care ;

The sailors summoned aft, all ready stand,

And man the enfolding brails at his command :

But here the doubtful officers dispute,t

Till skill and judgment prejudice confute :

For Rodmond to new methods still a foe,

Would first, at all events, the sheet let go

To long-tried practice obstinately warm,
He doubts conviction, and relies on form.
This Albert and Arion disapprove,
And first to brail the tack up firmly move :

" The watchful seaman, whose sagacious eye

On sure experience may with truth rely,

*
The courses are generally understood who would rather risk anything than forego
to be the main-sail, fore-sail, and mizzen, their ancient rules, although many of them
which are the largest and lowest sails on are in the highest degree equally absurd and
their several masts the term is, however,
; dangerous. It is to the wonderful sagacity
sometimes taken in a larger sense. of these philosophers that we owe the sea-
This is particularly mentioned, not be- maxims of avoiding to whistle in a storm,
cause there was, or could be, any dispute at because it will increase the wind of whis- ;

such a' time between the master of a ship tling on the wind in a calm of nailing horse-
;

and his chief mate, as the former can always shoes on the mast, to prevent the power of
command the latter, but to expose the ob- witches of nailing a fair wind to the star-
;

stinacy of a number of our veteran officers, board cat-head, &c.

 —
: ; —

Canto II] THE SHIPWRECK. 97

Who from the reigning cause foretels the effect,

This barbarous practice ever will reject;

-
For, fluttering loose in air, the rigid sail

Soon flits to ruins in the furious gale;

And he, who strives the tempest to disarm,

Will never first embrail the lee yard-arm."
So Albert spoke; to windward, at his call,

Some seamen the clue-garnet stand to haul

The tack's* eased off; while the involving clue

Between the pendent blocks ascending flew;
The sheet and weather-brace f they now stand by,

The lee clue-garnet, and the bunt-lines ply

Then, prepared, " Let go the sheet
!
all " he cries

Loud rattling, jarring, through the blocks it flies !

Shivering at first, till by the blast impelled

High o'er the lee yard-arm the canvas swelled

By spilling-lines % embraced, with brails confined,
It lies at length unshaken by the wind.
The fore-sail then secured with equal care,
Again to reef the main-sail they repair;
While some above the yard o'er-haul the tye,

Below, the down-haul tackle § others ply, ,

* It has been already remarked, that the used on particular occasions in tempestuous
tack always fastened to windward con-
is ; weather, are employed to draw together,
sequently, as soon as it is cast loose, and the and confine the belly of the sail, when in-
clue-garnet is hauled up, the weather clue flated by the wind over the yard.
of the sail immediately mounts to the yard ; § The violence of the gale forcing the
and this operation must be carefully per- yard much out, it could not easily have
formed in a storm, to prevent the sail from been lowered so as to reef the sail, without
splitting, or being torn to pieces by shivering. the application of a tackle, consisting of an
f Whenever the sheet is cast off, it is assemblage of pulleys, to haul it down on
necessary to pull in the weather-brace, to the mast this is afterwards converted into
:

prevent the violent shaking of the sail. rolling tackle, which has been already de-
X The spilling - lines, which are only scribed in a note, p. 94.
 — ; ;:

98 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

Jears,* lifts, and brails, a seaman each attends,

And down the mast its mighty yard descends:
When lowered sufficient they securely brace,
And fix the rolling tackle in its place;

The reef-lines f and their earings now prepared,

Mounting on pliant shrouds, % they man the yard;
Far on the extremes appear two able hands,
For no inferior skill this task demands
To windward, foremost, young Arion strides,

The lee yard-arm the gallant boatswain rides

Each earing to its cringle first they bend,

The reef-band § then along the yard extends

The circling earing round the extremes entwined,

By outer and by inner turns ||
they bind;

The reef-lines next from hand to hand received,

Through eyelet-holes and roban-legs were reeved;
The folding reefs in plaits enrolled they lay,

Extend the worming lines, and ends belay.

Hadst thou, Arion ! held the leeward post
While on the yard by mountain billows tossed,
Perhaps Oblivion o'er our tragic tale

Had then for ever drawn her dusky veil

* jfears, or geers, answer the same pur- carry sail ; they are also used as rope-
pose to the main-sail, fore-sail, and mizzen, ladders, by which seamen ascend, or de-
as halyards do to all inferior sails. The scend, to execute whatever is wanting to
tye,a sort of runner, or thick rope, is the be done about the sails and rigging.
upper part of the jears. § Reef-band consists of a piece of canvas

f Reef- lines are only used to reef the sewed across the sail, to strengthen it in
main-sail and fore-sail. the place where the eyelet-holes of the
t Shrouds, so called from the Saxon reefs are formed.
Scrud, consist of a range of thick ropes The outer turns of the earing serve to
||

stretching downwards from the mast-heads extend the sail along its yard the inner ;

to the right and left sides of a ship, in order turns are employed to confine its head-rope
to support the masts, and enable them to close to its surface.
Canto IE] THE SHIPWRECK. 99

WBMM:
-
Ill

But ruling Heaven prolonged thy vital date,

Severer ills to suffer and relate. .

-

For, while aloft the order those attend

To furl the main-sail, or on deck descend;

A sea,* up-surging with stupendous roll,

To instant ruin seems to doom the whole:

* A sea is the general term given by I when such a wave bursts over the deck, the
sailors to an enormous wave and hence,
; I vessel is said to have shipped a sea.
 ——
:: ; ; ;

IOO THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto IL

" friends, secure your hold !

" Arion cries

It comes all dreadful ! down the vessel lies

Half buried sideways ; while, beneath it tossed,

Four seamen off the lee yard-arm are lost

Torn with resistless fury from their hold,

In vain their struggling arms the yard enfold

In vain to grapple flying ropes they try,

The ropes, alas ! a solid gripe deny:

Prone on the midnight surge with panting breath

They cry for aid, and long contend with death
High o'er their heads the rolling billows sweep,
And down they sink in everlasting sleep
Bereft of power to help, their comrades see
The wretched victims die beneath the lee,

With fruitless sorrow their lost state bemoan,

Perhaps, a fatal prelude to their own !

In dark suspense on deck the pilots stand,

Nor can determine on the next command
Though still they knew the vessel's armed side

Impenetrable to the clasping tide;

Though still the waters by no secret wound
A passage to her deep recesses found;
Surrounding evils yet they ponder o'er,

A storm, a dangerous sea, and leeward shore !

"Should they, though reefed, again their sails ex-

tend,

Again in shivering streamers they may rend;

Or, should they stand, beneath the oppressive
strain

The down-pressed ship may never rise again

 : — — ;

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. IOI

Too late to weather* now Morea's land,

"
And drifting fast on Athen's rocky strand
Thus they lament the consequence severe,

Where perils unallayed by hope appear

Long pondering in their minds each feared event,
At last to furl the courses they consent;

That done, to reef the mizzen next agree,

And try f beneath it sidelong in the sea.

Now down the mast the yard they lower away,

Then jears and topping-lift J secure belay;

The head, with doubling canvas fenced around,

In balance near the lofty peak they bound;
The reef enwrapped, the inserted knittles tied,

The halyards throat and peak are next applied

The order given, the yard aloft they swayed,
The brails relaxed, the extended sheet belayed
The helm its post forsook, and, lashed a-lee, §

Inclined the wayward prow to front the sea.

IV. When sacred Orpheus on the Stygian coast,

With notes divine deplored his consort lost:

* To weather a shore is to pass to wind- ward ; the helm being fastened close to the
ward of it, which at this time was prevented lee-side, or, in the sea language, hard a-lee,
by the violence of the gale. Drift is that to retain her in that position. (See a further
motion and direction, by which a vessel is illustration in the last note of this Canto.)
forced to leeward sideways, when she is % A tackle, or assemblage of pulleys,
unable any longer to carry sail ; or, at least, which tops the upper end of the mizzen-yard.
is restrained to such a portion of sail, as This line, and the six following, describe
may be necessary to keep her sufficiently the operation of reefing and balancing the
inclined to one side, that she may not be mizzen. The knittle is a short line used to
dismasted by her violent labouring produced reef the sails by the bottom. The throat is
by the turbulence of the sea. that part of the mizzen-yard which is close to
t To try, is to lay the ship with her side the mast.
nearly in the direction of the wind and sea, § Lashed a-lee, is fastened to the lee-side.
with her head somewhat inclined to wind- See note, p. 88.
 : : ;

102 THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto II.

Though round him perils grew in fell array,

And fates and furies stood to bar his way;

Not more adventurous was the attempt to move
The infernal powers with strains of heavenly love,
Than mine to bid the unwilling Muse explore
The wilderness of rude mechanic lore

Such arduous toil sage Daedalus endured

In mazes, self-invented, long immured,
Till Genius her superior aid bestowed,
To guide him through that intricate abode —
Thus long imprisoned in a rugged way
Where Phoebus' daughters never aimed to stray,

The Muse, that tuned to barbarous sounds her string,

Now spreads, like Daedalus, a bolder wing;

The verse begins in softer strains to flow,

Replete with sad variety of woe.

As yet, amid this elemental war,
Where Desolation in his gloomy car
Triumphant rages round the starless void,

And Fate on every billow seems to ride;

Nor toil, nor hazard, nor distress appear
To sink the seamen with unmanly fear

Though their firm hearts no pageant-honour boast,

They scorn the wretch that trembles at his post

Who from the face of danger strives to turn,

Indignant from the social hour they spurn :

Though now full oft they felt the raging tide

In proud rebellion climb the vessel's side;

Though every rising wave more dreadful grows,
And in succession dire the deck o'erflows,
 : ! ;———;

Canto II ] THE SHIPWRE CK. 1 03

No future ills unknown their souls appal,

They know no danger, or they scorn it all

But even the generous spirits of the brave,

Subdued by toil, a friendly respite crave;

A short repose alone their thoughts implore,

Their harassed powers by slumber to restore.

Far other cares the master's mind employ,
Approaching perils all his hopes destroy:
In vain he spreads the graduated chart,
And bounds the distance by the rules of art;

Across the geometric plane expands

The compasses to circumjacent lands;

Ungrateful task ! for, no asylum found,

Death yawns on every leeward shore around
While Albert thus, with horrid doubts dismayed,
The geometric distances surveyed;

On deck the watchful Rodmond cries aloud,

"
" Secure your lives ! grasp every man a shroud

Roused from his trance, he mounts with eyes aghast;

When o'er the ship, in undulation vast,

A giant surge down rushes from on high,

And fore and aft dissevered ruins lie

As when, Britannia's empire to maintain,

Great Hawke descends in thunder on the main,

Around the brazen voice of battle roars,

And fatal lightnings blast the hostile shores

Beneath the storm their shattered navies groan

The trembling deep recoils from zone to zone

Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke,

The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke:

 — ; : : :

104 THE SHIPWRECK, [Canto II

Torn from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew,

And gripes and lashings all asunder flew;

Companion, binnacle,* in floating wreck,

With compasses and glasses strewed the deck;

The balanced mizzen, rending to the head,

In fluttering fragments from its bolt-rope fled;

The sides convulsive shook on groaning beams,

And, rent with labour, yawned their pitchy seams.

They sound the well,t and, terrible to hear !

Five feet immersed along the line appear;

At either pump they ply the clanking brake,
And, turn by turn, the ungrateful office take

Rodmond, Arion, and Palemon here

At this sad task all diligent appear

As some strong citadel begirt with foes

Tries long the tide of ruin to oppose,

Destruction near her spreads his black array,

And death and sorrow mark his horrid way;
Till, in some destined hour, against her wall

In tenfold rage the fatal thunders fall

It breaks ! it bursts before the cannonade I

And following hosts the shattered domes invade

Her inmates long repel the hostile flood,

And shield their sacred charge in streams of blood

* The companion is a wooden porch one of which is placed before the master, at
placed over the ladder that leads down to his appointed station. In all the old sea-
the cabins of the officers. The binnacle is books it was called bittacle.
a case which is placed on deck before the f The well is an apartment in a ship's
helm, containing three divisions : the middle hold serving to inclose the pumps it is :

one for a lamp or candle, and the two others sounded by dropping down a measured iron
for mariners' compasses. There are always rod, which is connected with a long line.
two binnacles on the deck of a ship of war, The brake is the pump handle.
 Q : :: ! ; ; —

Canto I THE SHIPWRECK. ro5

So the brave mariners their pumps attend.

And help incessant, by rotation, lend;

But all in vain ! for now the sounding cord

Updrawn, an undiminished depth explored.

Nor this severe distress is found alone,
The ribs, oppressed by ponderous cannon, groan ;

Deep rolling from the watery volume's height,

The tortured sides seem bursting with their weight

So reels Pelorus with convulsive throes,

When in his veins the burning earthquake glows

Hoarse through his entrails roars the infernal flame,

And central thunders rend his groaning frame-

Accumulated mischiefs thus arise,

And Fate, vindictive, all their skill defies

For this, one remedy is only known,

From the torn ship her metal must be thrown

Eventful task ! which last distress requires,

And dread of instant death alone inspires

For, while intent the yawning decks to ease,

Filled ever and anon with rushing seas,

Some fatal billow with recoiling sweep

May whirl the helpless wretches in the deep.

No season this for counsel or delay;

Too soon the eventful moments haste away

Here perseverance, with each help of art,

Must join the boldest efforts of the heart;

These only now their misery can relieve,

These only now a dawn of safety give

While o'er the quivering deck from van to rear

Broad surges roll in terrible career.
 —— — ;

THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

Rodmond, Arion, and a chosen crew,

This office in the face of death pursue;
The wheeled artillery o'er the deck to guide,

Rodmond descending claimed the weather-side;

Fearless of heart the chief his orders gave,

Fronting the rude assaults of every wave

Like some strong watch-tower nodding o'er the

deep,
Whose rocky base the foaming waters sweep,

Untamed he stood; the stern aerial war

Had marked his honest face with many a scar;
Meanwhile Arion, traversing the waist,*
The cordage of the leeward-guns unbraced,
And pointed crows beneath the metal placed
Watching the roll, their forelocks they withdrew,

And from their beds the reeling cannon threw;

Then, from the windward battlements unbound,
Rodmond's associates wheeled the artillery round,

Pointed with iron fangs, their bars beguile

The ponderous arms across the steep defile;

Then, hurled from sounding hinges o'er the side,

Thundering they plunge into the flashing tide.

The ship, thus eased, some little respite finds

In this rude conflict of the seas and winds

Such ease Alcides felt when, clogged with gore,
The envenomed mantle from his side he tore,

* The waist is that part of a ship which steps in descent, from the quarter-deck and
is contained between the quarter-deck and forecastle, she is said to be galley-built
forecastle or the middle of that deck which
; but when it is considerably deeper, as with

is immediately below them. When the six or seven steps, she is then called frigate-
waist of a merchant-ship is only one or two built.
 ; — :

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. 107

When, stung with burning pain, he strove too late

To stop the swift career of cruel fate

Yet then his heart one ray of hope procured,

Sad harbinger of sevenfold pangs endured
Such, and so short, the pause of woe she found !

Cimmerian darkness shades the deep around,

Save when the lightnings in terrific blaze

Deluge the cheerless gloom with horrid rays

Above, all ether fraught with scenes of woe,

With grim destruction threatens all below;

 ;: ; :

I o8 THE SHIP WRE CK. [ Canto II.

Beneath, the storm-lashed surges furious rise,

And wave uprolled on wave assails the skies

With ever-floating bulwarks they surround

The ship, half swallowed in the black profound.

With ceaseless hazard and fatigue oppressed,

Dismay and anguish every heart possessed;

For while, with sweeping inundation o'er

The sea-beat ship the booming waters roar,

Displaced beneath by her capacious womb,

They rage their ancient station to resume;

By secret ambushes, their force to prove,

Through many a winding channel first they rove,

Till gathering fury, like the fevered blood,

Through her dark veins they roll a rapid flood

When unrelenting thus the leaks they found,

The pumps with ever clanking strokes resound;

Around each leaping valve, by toil subdued,
The tough bull-hide must ever be renewed
Their sinking hearts unusual horrors chill,

And down their weary limbs thick dews distil

No ray of light their dying hope redeems,

Pregnant with some new woe, each moment teems.

Again the chief the instructive chart extends,
And o'er the figured plane attentive bends
To him the motion of each orb was known
That wheels around the sun's refulgent throne;

But here, alas ! his science nought avails,

Skill droops unequal, and experience fails:

The different traverses, since twilight made,

He on the hydrographic circle laid;
 ! : —

Canto II] THE SHIPWRECK.

Then, in the graduated arch contained,
The angle of lee-way,* seven points, remained

Her place discovered by the rules of art,

Unusual terrors shook the master's heart,

When, on the immediate line of drift, he found

The rugged Isle, with rocks and breakers bound,
Of Falconera,t distant only now
Nine lessening leagues beneath the leeward bow:
For, if on those destructive shallows tost,

The helpless bark with all her crew are lost;

As fatal still appears, that danger o'er,

The steep Saint George, and rocky Gardalor.

With him the pilots, of their hopeless state

In mournful consultation now debate —
Not more perplexing doubts her chiefs appal

When some proud city verges to her fall,

While ruin glares around, and pale affright

Convenes her councils in the dead of night.

No blazoned trophies o'er their conclave spread,

Nor storied pillars raised aloft their head
But here the Queen of Shade around them threw
Her dragon wing, disastrous to the view

* The lee-way or drift, in this passage, t Falconera, a small island in the Archi-
are synonymous terms. The true course pelago, to theN.W. of Milo: there is an
and distance, resulting from these traverses, open space of sea to the north and south of
is discovered by collecting the difference of it: but in every other direction are islands

latitude,and departure of each course and ; at no great distance. The small and steep
reducing the whole into one departure, and Island of St. George is situated to the S.W.
one difference of latitude, according to the of Cape Colonna, at the entrance of the
known rules of trigonometry this reduction
: Gulf of Egina. Gardalor lies off the coast
will immediately ascertain the base and of Attica, between Cape Colonna and Porto
perpendicular ; or, in other words, will give Leono.
the difference of latitude and departure, to
discover the course and distance.
 — — : -

ITO THE SHIPWRECK. {Canto II.

Dire was the scene with whirlwind, hail, and shower;

Black Melancholy ruled the fearful hour:
Beneath, tremendous rolled the flashing tide
Where Fate on every billow seemed to ride —
Inclosed with ills, by peril unsubdued,
Great in distress the master-seaman stood !

Skilled to command; deliberate to advise;

Expert in action; and in council wise

Thus to his partners, by the crew unheard,
The dictates of his soul, the chief referred :

"Ye faithful mates ! who all my troubles share,

Approved companions of your master's care !

To you, alas ! 'twere fruitless now to tell

Our sad distress, already known too well

 — ;; ;:: !

Canto II] THE SHIPWRECK

This morn with favouring gales the port we left,

Though now of every flattering hope bereft

No skill nor long experience could forecast

The unseen approach of this destructive blast;

These seas, where storms at various seasons blow,

No reigning winds nor certain omens know.

The hour, the occasion, all your skill demands,
A leaky ship, embayed by dangerous lands !

Our bark no transient jeopardy surrounds,

Groaning she lies beneath unnumbered wounds:

'Tis ours the doubtful remedy to find,

To shun the fury of the seas and wind;

For in this hollow swell, with labour sore,
Her flank can bear the bursting floods no more.
One only shift, though desperate, we must try,

And that, before the boisterous storm to fly

Then less her sides will feel the surge's power,

Which thus may soon the foundering hull devour.

'Tis true, the vessel and her costly freight

To me consigned, my orders only wait

Yet, since the charge of every life is mine,
To equal votes our counsels I resign

Forbid it, Heaven ! that in this dreadful hour

I claim the dangerous reins of purblind power

But should we now resolve to bear away,
Our hopeless state can suffer no delay ;

Nor can we, thus bereft of every sail,

Attempt to steer obliquely on the gale

For then, if broaching sideway to the sea,

Our dropsied ship may founder by the lee

 — ; ; : ; ! ;

112 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

Vain all endeavours, then, to bear away,

Nor helm, nor pilot, would she more obey."
He said : the listening mates with fixed regard,

And silent reverence, his opinion heard

Important was the question in debate,
And o'er their councils hung impending fate.

Rodmond, in many a scene of peril tried,

Had oft the master's happier skill descried

Yet now, the hour, the scene, the occasion known,

Perhaps with equal right preferred his own :

Of long experience in the naval art,

Blunt was his speech, and naked was his heart

Alike to him each climate, and each blast,
The first in danger, in retreat the last :

Sagacious, balancing the opposed events,

From Albert his opinion thus dissents

" Too true the perils of the present hour,

Where toils succeeding toils our strength o'erpower

Our bark, 'tis true, no shelter here can find,

Sore shattered by the ruffian seas and wind :

Yet where with safety can we dare to scud *

Before this tempest, and pursuing flood ?

At random driven, to present death we haste,

And one short hour perhaps may be our last

* The movement of scudding, from the perpetually to the risk of broaching-to ; and
Swedish word skutta, is never attempted in the want of sufficient sea-room : a sea strik-

a contrary wind, unless, as in the present ing the ship violently on the stern may dash
instance, the condition of a ship renders her it inwards, by which she must inevitably
incapable of sustaining any longer on her founder ; in broaching-to suddenly, she is
side the mutual efforts of the winds and threatened with being immediately over-set
waves. The principal hazards incident to and, for want of sea-room, she is endangered
scudding are generally a pooping sea the dif-; with shipwreck on a lee shore ; a circum-
ficulty of steering, which exposes the vessel stance too dreadful to require explanation.
 ; ; :

Canto //.] THE SHIPWRECK. 1

13

Though Corinth's Gulf extend along the lee,

To whose safe ports appears a passage free,

Yet think ! this furious unremitting gale

Deprives the ship of every ruling sail

And if before it she directly flies,

New ills enclose us and new dangers rise :

Here Falconera spreads her lurking snares,

There distant Greece her rugged shelves prepares :

Our hull, if once it strikes that iron coast,

Asunder bursts, in instant ruin lost ;

Nor she alone, but with her all the crew,

Beyond relief, are doomed to perish too :

Such mischiefs follow if we bear away,

O safer that sad refuge — to delay !

" Then of our purpose this appears the scope,

To weigh the danger with the doubtful hope :

Though sorely buffeted by every sea,

Our hull unbroken long may try a-lee

The crew, though harassed much with toils severe,

Still at their pumps, perceive no hazards near

Shall we incautious then the danger tell,

At once their courage and their hope to quell %

—
Prudence forbids ! this southern tempest soon
May change its quarter with the changing moon ;

Its rage, though terrible, may soon subside,

Nor into mountains lash the unruly tide :

These leaks shall then decrease —the sails once more

Direct our course to some relieving shore."

Thus while he spoke, around from man to man

At either pump a hollow murmur ran :
 : ; ;— : :

1 14 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II

For while the vessel through unnumbered chinks,

Above, below, the invading water drinks,
Sounding her depth they eyed the wetted scale,

And lo ! the leaks o'er all their powers prevail

Yet at their post, by terrors unsubdued,
They with redoubling force their task pursued.

And now the senior pilots seemed to wait

Arion's voice, to close the dark debate

Not o'er his vernal life the ripening sun

Had yet progressive twice ten summers run :

Slow to debate, yet eager to excel,

In thy sad school, stern Neptune ! taught too well

With lasting pain to rend his youthful heart,

Dire Fate in venom dipt her keenest dart

Till his firm spirit, tempered long to ill,

Forgot her persecuting scourge to feel

But now the horrors that around him roll,

Thus roused to action his rekindling soul :

" Can we, delayed in this tremendous tide,

A moment pause what purpose to decide ]

Alas ! from circling horrors thus combined,

One method of relief alone we find :

Thus water-logged,* thus helpless to remain

Amid this hollow, how ill-judged ! how vain !

* A ship is said to be water-logged, when, from place to place, the stability of the ship
having received through her leaks a great is she is therefore almost totally
utterly lost ;

quantity of water into her hold, she has be- deprived of the use of her sails, which
come so heavy and inactive on the sea, as operate to overset her, or press the head
to yield without resistance to the efforts of under water hence, there is no resource
:

every wave that rushes over the deck. As for the crew, except to free her by the
in this dangerous situation the centre of pumps, or to abandon her for the boats as
gravity is no longer fixed, but fluctuates soon as possible.
 ; : ; ; —
;; S

Canto II. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 1

1

Our sea-breached vessel can no longer bear

The floods, that o'er her burst in dread career
The labouring hull already seems half filled

With water through an hundred leaks distilled

Thus drenched by every wave, her riven deck,

Stript and defenceless, floats a naked wreck

At every pitch the o'erwhelming billows bend
Beneath their load the quivering bowsprit's end ;

A fearful warning ! since the masts on high

On that support with trembling hope rely

At either pump our seamen pant for breath,

In dire dismay, anticipating death ;

Still all our powers the increasing leaks defy,

We sink at sea, no shore, no haven nigh
One dawn of hope yet breaks athwart the gloom
To light and save us from a watery tomb,
That bids us shun the death impending here ;

Fly from the following blast, and shoreward steer.

" 'Tis urged, indeed, the fury of the gale

Precludes the help of every guiding sail

And, driven before it on the watery waste,

To rocky shores and scenes of death we haste ;

But, haply, Falconera we may shun,

And far to Grecian coasts is yet the run :

Less harassed then, our scudding ship may bear

The assaulting surge repelled upon her rear,

And since as soon that tempest may decay

—
When steering shoreward, wherefore thus delay ]
Should we at last be driven by dire decree

Too near the fatal margin of the sea,

 ; ——
;: ;

Il6 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II

The hull dismasted there a while may ride

With lengthened cables, on the raging tide ;

Perhaps kind Heaven, with interposing power,

May curb the tempest ere that dreadful hour
But here ingulfed and foundering, while we stay,

Fate hovers o'er and marks us for her prey."

He said : Palemon saw with grief of heart

The storm prevailing o'er the pilot's art

In silent terror and distress involved,

He heard their last alternative resolved :

High beat his bosom —with such fear subdued,

Beneath the gloom of some enchanted wood,

Oft in old time the wandering swain explored
The midnight wizards, breathing rites abhorred :

Trembling approached their incantations fell,

And, chilled with horror, heard the songs of hell.

Arion saw, with secret anguish moved,

The deep affliction of the friend he loved,
And, all awake to friendship's genial heat,

His bosom felt consenting tremors beat

Alas ! no season this for tender love,

Far hence the music of the myrtle grove

He tried with soft persuasion's melting lore

Palemon's fainting courage to restore

His wounded spirit healed with friendship's balm,
And bade each conflict of the mind be calm.
Now had the pilots all the events revolved,

And on their final refuge thus resolved

When, like the faithful shepherd, who beholds

Some prowling wolf approach his fleecy folds,
 ] — — : ;
; ; 7

Canto II. THE SHIPWRECK. T 1

To the brave crew, whom racking doubts perplex,

The dreadful purpose Albert thus directs :

" Unhappy partners in a wayward fate !

Whose courage now is known perhaps too late

Ye ! who unmoved behold this angry storm
In conflict all the rolling deep deform,

Who, patient in adversity, still bear

The firmest front when greatest ills are near

The truth, though painful, I must now reveal,

That long in vain I purposed to conceal

Ingulfed, all help of art we vainly try

To weather leeward shores, alas ! too nigh :

Our crazy bark no longer can abide

The seas that thunder o'er her battered side

And, while the leaks a fatal warning give

That in this raging sea she cannot live,

One only refuge from despair we find

At once to wear and scud before the wind :

Perhaps even then to ruin we may steer,

For rocky shores beneath our lee appear ;

But that's remote, and instant death is here :

Yet there, by Heaven's assistance we may gain

Some creek or inlet of the Grecian main :

Or, sheltered by some rock, at anchor ride

Till with abating rage the blast subside :

But if, determined by the will of Heaven,

Our helpless bark at last ashore is driven,

These councils followed, from a watery grave

Our crew perhaps amid the surf may save
 8 ! — : ;;

1 1 THE SHIPWRECK. \Canto it

" And first, let all our axes be secured

To cut the masts and rigging from aboard ;

Then to the quarters bind each plank and oar

To float between the vessel and the shore :

The longest cordage too must be conveyed

On deck, and to the weather-rails belayed :

So they, who haply reach alive the land,

The extended lines may fasten on the strand,
Whene'er loud thundering on the leeward shore,
While yet aloof, we hear the breakers roar

Thus for the terrible event prepared,

Brace fore and aft to starboard every yard ;

So shall our masts swim lighter on the wave,

And from the broken rocks our seamen save
Then westward turn the stern, that every mast

May shoreward fall as from the vessel cast

When o'er her side once more the billows bound,
Ascend the rigging till she strikes the ground ;

And when you hear aloft the dreadful shock

That strikes her bottom on some pointed rock,
The boldest of our sailors must descend
The dangerous business of the deck to tend

Then burst the hatches off, and every stay

And every fastening lanyard cut away,

Planks, gratings, booms, and rafts to leeward cast ;

Then with redoubled strokes attack each mast,

That buoyant lumber may sustain you o'er

The rocky shelves and ledges to the shore :

But as your firmest succour, till the last

O cling securely on each faithful mast

 : — !; :

Canto If.] THE SHIPWRECK. 1

19

Though great the danger, and the task severe,

Yet bow not to the tyranny of fear;

If once that slavish yoke your souls subdue,

Adieu to hope ! to life itself adieu !

" I know among you some have oft beheld

A blood-hound train, by rapine's lust impelled,

On England's cruel coast impatient stand,

To rob the wanderers wrecked upon their strand.
These, while their savage office they pursue,
Oft wound to death the helpless plundered crew,

Who, 'scaped from every horror of the main,

Implored their mercy, but implored in vain !

Yet dread not this, a crime to Greece unknown,

Such blood-hounds all her circling shores disown;

Her sons, by barbarous tyranny oppressed,

Can share affliction with the wretch distressed

Their hearts, by cruel fate inured to grief,

Oft to the friendless stranger yield relief."

With conscious horror struck, the naval band
Detested for awhile their native land;
They cursed the sleeping vengeance of the laws,

That thus forgot her guardian sailors' cause.

Meanwhile, the master's voice again they heard,

Whom, as with filial duty, all revered
" No more remains —but now a trusty band
Must ever at the pumps industrious stand

And, while with us the rest attend to wear,

Two skilful seamen to the helm repair

And thou, Eternal Power ! whose awful sway

The storms revere, and roaring seas obey
 ! —
; ; L

120 THE SHIPWRECK. \ Canto I

On thy supreme assistance we rely;

Thy mercy supplicate, if doomed to die !

Perhaps this storm is sent with healing breath

From neighbouring shores to scourge disease and death :

'Tis ours on thine unerring laws to trust,

"
With thee, great Lord !
'
whatever is, is just'

He said : and, with consenting reverence fraught,

The sailors joined his prayer in silent thought:

His intellectual eye, serenely bright

Saw distant objects with prophetic light

Thus, in a land that lasting wars oppress,

That groans beneath misfortune and distress

Whose wealth to conquering armies falls a prey,

Till all her vigour, pride, and fame decay;

Some bold sagacious statesman, from the helm

Sees desolation gathering o'er his realm

He darts around his penetrating eyes

Where dangers grow, and hostile unions rise

With deep attention marks the invading foe,

Eludes their wiles, and frustrates every blow,

Tries his last art the tottering State to save,

Or in its ruins finds a glorious grave.

Still in the yawning trough the vessel reels,

Ingulfed beneath two fluctuating hills;

On either side they rise, tremendous scene !

A long dark melancholy vale between ;

*

* That the reader who is unacquainted of the explanation of those articles as

with the manoeuvres of navigation, may they appear in the Dictionary of the
conceive a clearer idea of a ship's state when Marine.
trying, and of the change of her situation Trying is the situation in which a ship

to that of scudding; I have quoted a part lies nearly in the trough or hollow of the
 : ;

Canto II.~\ THE SHIPWRECK. 121

The balanced ship now forward, now behind,

Still felt the impression of the waves and wind,

And to the right and left by turns inclined

But Albert from behind the balance drew,
And on the prow its double efforts threw.
"
The order now was given to " bear away !

The order given, the timoneers obey

Both stay -sail sheets to mid-ships were conveyed,

And round the foremost on each side belayed;

Thus ready, to the halyards they apply,

They hoist ! away the flitting ruins fly:

sea in a tempest, particularly when it blows cess of the angle to leeward, is called her
contrary to her course. /ailing off.
In trying, as well as in scudding, the sails Wearing, or wearing, as used in the pre-
are always reduced in proportion to the sent sense, may be defined, the movement
increase of the storm ; and in either state, by which a ship changes her state from try-
if the storm is excessive, she may have all ing to that of scudding, or of running before
her sails furled ; or be, according to the sea- the direction of the wind and sea.
phrase, under bare poles. It is an axiom in natural philosophy,
The intent of spreading a sail at this time "That every body will persevere in a state of
is to keep the ship more steady, and to pre- rest, or of moving uniformly in a right line,
vent her from rolling violently, by pressing unless it its state by
be compelled to change
her side down in the water; and also to forces impressed, and that the change of
turn her head towards the source of the motion is proportional to the moving force
wind, so that the shock of the seas may fall impressed, and made according to the right
more obliquely on herflank, than when she line in which that force acts."
liesalong the trough of the sea, or in the Henceit is easy to conceive how a ship

interval between two waves. While she is compelled to turn into any direction by
lies in this situation, the helm is fastened the force of the wind, acting upon any part
close to the lee-side, to prevent her, as of her length in lines parallel to the plane of
much as possible, from falling to lee-ward. the horizon. Thus, in the act of weering,
But as the ship is not then kept in equili- which is a necessary consequence of this
brio by the operation of her sails, which at invariable principle, the object of the sea-
other times counterbalance each other at man is to reduce the action of the wind on
the head and stern, she is moved by a slow the ship's hind part, and to receive its

but continual vibration, which turns her utmost exertion on her fore part, so that
head alternately to windward and to leeward, the latter may be pushed to leeward. This
forming an angle of 30 or 40 degrees in the effect is either produced by the operation
interval. That part where she stops in of thesails, or by the impression of the wind

approaching the direction of the wind, is on the masts and yards. In the former
called her coming- to; and the contrary ex- case, the sails on the hind part of the ship
 ; — — : ;

122 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto II.

Yet Albert new resources still prepares,

Conceals his grief, and doubles all his cares

"Away there; lower the mizzen-yard on deck,"

"
He calls, " and brace the foremost yards aback !

His great example every bosom fires,

New life rekindles, and new hope inspires.

While to the helm unfaithful still she lies,

One desperate remedy at last he tries

" Haste ! with your weapons cut the shrouds and stay,
"
And hew at once the mizzen-mast away !

He said : to cut the girding stay they run,

Soon on each side the several shrouds are gone

are either furled or arranged nearly parallel still remains incapable of answering the
to the direction of the wind, which then helm by turning her prow to leeward.
glides ineffectually along their surfaces ; at Scudding'is that movement in navigation
the same time the foremost sails are spread by which a ship is carried precipitately be-
abroad, so as to receive the greatest exer- fore a tempest.
tion of the wind. The fore part accordingly As a ship flies with amazing rapidity
yields to this impulse, and is put in motion through the water whenever this expedient
and this motion, necessarily conspiring with is put in practice, it is never attempted in a

that of thewind, pushes the ship about as much contrary wind, unless when her condition
as is requisite to produce the desired effect. renders her incapable of sustaining the
But when the tempest is so violent as to mutual effort of the wind and waves any
preclude the use of sails, the effort of the longer on her side, without being exposed
wind operates almost equally on the oppo- to the most imminent danger. A ship
site ends of the ship, because the masts and either scuds with a sail extended on her
yards situated near the head and stern serve foremast, or if the storm is excessive, with-
to counterbalance each other in receiving out any sail, which in the sea-phrase is

its impression. The effect of the helm is called scudding under bare poles.
also considerably diminished, because the The principal hazards incident to scudding
head- way, which gives life and vigour to all are, generally, a sea striking the ship's stern;
its operations, time feeble and
is at this the difficulty of steering, which perpetually
ineffectual. Hence
becomes necessary
it exposes her to the danger of broaching-to
to destroy this equilibrium which subsists and the want of sufficient sea-room. A sea
between the masts and yards before and which strikes the stern violently may shatter
behind, and to throw the balance forward it to pieces, by which the ship must inevi-
to prepare for weering. If this cannot be tably founder. By broaching-to suddenly,
effectedby the arrangement of the yards she is threatened with losing all her masts
on the masts, and it becomes absolutely and sails, or being immediately overturned :

necessary to weer, in order to save the ship and, for want of sea-room, she exposed is

from destruction, the mizzen-mast must be to the danger of being wrecked on a lee-
cut away, and even the main-mast, if she shore.
 :

Canto II.] THE SHIPWRECK. 123

Fast by the fated pine bold Rodmond stands,

The impatient axe hung gleaming in his hands;

Brandished on high, it fell with dreadful sound,

The tall mast groaning felt the deadly wound;

Deep gashed beneath, the tottering structure rings,

And crashing, thundering, o'er the quarter swings:

Thus, when some limb convulsed with pangs of death

Imbibes the gangrene's pestilential breath,

The experienced artist from the blood betrays

The latent venom, or its course delays
But, if the infection triumphs o'er his art,

Tainting the vital stream that warms the heart,

Resolved at last, he quits the unequal strife,

Severs the member and preserves the life.

Wfjf
« H1 :--
$;
:

^Wt~^
 —A

THE ARGUMENT.

I. Reflections on the Beneficial Poetry —Diffidence of the Author.—

Influence of

II. Wreck of the Mizzen-mast cleared— Ship Veers before the Wind — Labours Hard
away
—Different Stations of the Officers — Appearance of the Island of Falconera. — III. Ex-
cursion to the adjacent Nations of Greece Renowned in Antiquity —Athens — Socrates,

Plato, Aristides, Solon — Corinth: Architecture — Sparta — Leonidas — Invasion by

its

Xerxes — Lycurgus— Epaminondas — Present State of the Spartans —Arcadia — Former

Happiness and Fertility — Its Present Distress the Effect of Slavery — Ithaca— Ulysses

and Penelope —Argos and Mycaene —Agamemnon — Macronisi— Lemnos —Vulcan — Delos
—Apollo and Diana—Troy— Sestos— Leander and Hero — Delphos—Temple of Apollo
Parnassus —The Muses. — IV. Subject resumed—Address to the Spirits of the Storm —

Tempest, accompanied with Rain, Hail, and Meteors — Darkness of the Night, Lightning

and Thunder — Daybreak — George's St. open upon them—The Ship in great Dan-
Cliffs

ger passes the Island of George. — V. Land of Athens appears — Helmsman struck Blind
St.

by Lightning— Ship laid broadside to the Shore — Bowsprit, Foremast, and Main Topmast
carried away — Albert, Rodmond, Arion, and Palemon, strive to Save themselves on the

Wreck of the Foremast — The Ship parts asunder— Death of Albert and Rodmond — Arion
reaches the Shore — Finds Palemon Expiring on the Beach — His Dying Address to Arion,

who is led away by the humane Natives.

 ;

:--^i^y c

Canto Cjjirfc.
&-.
HEN in a barbarous age, with blood defiled,
The human savage roamed the gloomy wild;
When sullen Ignorance her flag displayed,
And rapine and revenge her voice obeyed
Sent from the shores of light, the Muses came
The dark and solitary race to tame,

The war of lawless passions to control,

To melt in tender sympathy the soul;
 : ; ; ; :

1 28 THE SHIP WRE CK. [ Canto III.

The heart's remote recesses to explore,

And touch its springs when prose availed no more
The kindling spirit caught the empyreal ray,
And glowed congenial with the swelling lay
Roused from the chaos of primeval night,

At once fair truth and reason sprung to light.

When great Maeonides, in rapid song,

The thundering tide of battle rolls along,

Each ravished bosom feels the high alarms,

And all the burning pulses beat to arms;

Hence, war's terrific glory to display,

Became the theme of every epic lay

But when his strings with mournful magic tell

What dire distress Laertes' son befell,

The strains meandering through the maze of woe

Bid sacred sympathy the heart o'erflow;
Far through the boundless realms of thought he springs,
From earth upborne on Pegasean wings,
While distant poets, trembling as they view
His sunward flight, the dazzling track pursue;

His magic voice, that rouses and delights,

Allures and guides to climb Olympian heights.

But I, alas ! through scenes bewildered stray,

Far from the light of his unerring ray

While all unused the wayward path to tread,

Darkling I wander with prophetic dread

To me in vain the bold Mseonian lyre
Awakes the numbers fraught with living fire,

Full oft indeed that mournful harp of yore

Wept the sad wanderer lost upon the shore;

 ] : ; —: :: : 9

Canto III. THE SHIPWRECK. i 2

But o'er that scene the impatient numbers ran,

Subservient only to a nobler plan

'Tis mine the unravelled prospect to display,

And chain the events in regular array,

Though hard the task to sing in varied strains,

While all unchanged the tragic theme remains !

Thrice happy, might the secret powers of art

Unlock the latent windings of the heart !

Might the sad numbers draw compassion's tear

For kindred miseries, oft beheld too near

For kindred wretches oft in ruin cast

On Albion's strand beneath the wintry blast

For all the pangs, the complicated woe,

Her bravest sons, her faithful sailors know !

So pity, gushing o'er each British breast,

Might sympathize with Britain's sons distressed

For this, my theme through mazes I pursue,

Which nor Maeonides, nor Maro knew.

II. Awhile the mast, in ruins dragged behind,

Balanced the impression of the helm and wind;
The wounded serpent agonized with pain

Thus trails his mangled volume on the plain

But now, the wreck dissevered from the rear,

The long reluctant prow began to veer

While round before the enlarging wind it falls,

" Square fore and aft the yards," * the master calls;

* The wind is said to enlarge, when it I square the yards is, in this place, to haul
veers from the side towards the stern. To I
them directly across the ship's length.
 — : : : :

130 THE ShlPWRECK. [Canto III

" You timooners her motion still attend,

For on your steerage all our lives depend,

So steady !
* meet her ! watch the blast behind,
And steer her right before the seas and wind."
" Starboard again !
" the watchful pilot cries;
" Starboard !
" the obedient timoneer replies

Then back to port.f revolving at command,

The wheel rolls swiftly through each glowing hand.
The ship, no longer foundering by the lee,

Bears on her side the invasions of the sea;

All lonely o'er the desert waste she flies,

Scourged on by surges, storms, and bursting skies

As when enclosing harpooners assail

In hyperborean seas the slumbering whale,

Soon as their javelins pierce his scaly side,

He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide;

And racked all o'er with lacerating pain,

He flies remote beneath the flood in vain

So with resistless haste the wounded ship

Scuds from the chasing waves along the deep

While dashed apart by her dividing prow,
Like burning adamant the waters glow;
Her joints forget their firm elastic tone,

Her long keel trembles, and her timbers groan

Upheaved behind her in tremendous height

The billows frown, with fearful radiance bright;

* Steady 1 is an order to steer the ship take larboard for starboard. In all large
according to the line on which she then ad- ships, the tiller (or long bar of timber that
vances, without deviating to the right or left. is fixed horizontally to the upperend of the
f The left side of a ship is called port, in rudder) guided by a wheel, which acts
is

steering, that the helmsman may not mis- upon it with the powers of a crane or windlass.
 : —
: ;

Canto III.} THE SHIPWRECK. 131

Now quivering o'er the topmost wave she rides,

While deep beneath the enormous gulf divides;

Now launching headlong down the horrid vale,

She hears no more the roaring of the gale;

Till up the dreadful height again she flies,

Trembling beneath the current of the skies

As that rebellious angel, who from Heaven

To regions of eternal pain was driven,
When dreadless he forsook the Stygian shore
The distant realms of Eden to explore;

Here, on sulphureous clouds sublime upheaved,

With daring wing the infernal air he cleaved
There, in some hideous gulf descending prone,
Far in the void abrupt of night was thrown
Even so she climbs the briny mountain's height,

Then down the black abyss precipitates her flight:

The masts, around whose tops the whirlwinds sing,

With long vibration round her axle swing.

To guide the wayward course amid the gloom,
The watchful pilots different posts assume
Albert and Rodmond on the poop* appear,
There to direct each guiding timoneer;

While at the bow the watch Arion keeps,

To shun the cruisers wandering o'er the deeps:

Where'er he moves Palemon still attends,

As if on him his only hope depends;

* Poop, from the Latin word fiupfiis, is side forward, beginning at the place where
the hindmost and highest deck of a ship. the planks arch inwards, and terminating
The boiv is the rounding part of a ship's where they close at the stern or prow.
 —
;

132 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III

While Rodmond, fearful of some neighbouring shore,

Cries, ever and anon, " Look out afore!"
Thus o'er the flood four hours she scudding flew,
When Falconera's rugged cliffs they view

Faintly along the larboard bow descried,

As o'er its mountain tops the lightnings glide

High o'er its summit, through the gloom of night,
The glimmering watch-tower cast a mournful light:
In dire amazement rivetted they stand,
And hear the breakers lash the rugged strand
 ! : :

Canto III.] THE SHIPWRECK. 133

But scarce perceived, when past the beam* it flies,

Swift as the rapid eagle cleaves the skies

That danger past reflects a feeble joy,

But soon returning fears their hope destroy:

As in the Atlantic Ocean when we find

Some alp of ice driven southward by the wind,

The sultry air all sickening pants around,

In deluges of torrid ether drowned;

Till when the floating isle approaches nigh,

In cooling tides the aerial billows fly:

Awhile delivered from the scorching heat,

In gentler tides our feverish pulses beat
Such transient pleasure, as they passed this strand,

A moment bade their throbbing hearts expand ;

The' illusive meteors of a lifeless fire,

Too soon they kindle, and too soon expire.

III. Say Memory! thou from whose unerring tongue

Instructive flows the animated song,

What regions now the flying ship surround 1

Regions of old, through all the world renowned;

That, once the poet's theme, the muses' boast,

Now lie in ruins, in oblivion lost

Did they, whose sad distress these lays deplore,

Unskilled in Grecian or in Roman lore,

Unconscious pass each famous circling shore?

* On the beam, implies any distance from northward, any object lying east or west is
the ship on a line with the beams, or at right said to be on her starboard or larboard
angles with the keel : thus, if the ship steers beam.
 ; ;; :;

134 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto IIL

They did — for blasted in the barren shade,

Here, all too soon, the buds of science fade:

Sad ocean's genius, in untimely hour,

Withers the bloom of every springing flower

Here Fancy droops, while sullen clouds, and stonn,
The generous temper of the soul deform:
Then, if among the wandering naval train,

One stripling, exiled from the Aonian plain,

Had e'er, entranced in Fancy's soothing dream,

Approached to taste the sweet Castalian stream;

(Since those salubrious streams, with power divine,

To purer sense the softened soul refine,)

Sure he, amid unsocial mates immured,
To learning lost, severer grief endured

If one this pain of living death possessed,

It dwelt supreme, Arion ! in thy breast

When, with Palemon watching in the night

Beneath pale Cynthia's melancholy light,

You oft recounted those surrounding states,

Whose glory Fame with brazen tongue relates.

Immortal Athens first, in ruin spread,

Contiguous lies at Port Liono's* head;

Great source of science ! whose immortal name
Stands foremost in the glorious roll of fame

Here godlike Socrates and Plato shone,

And firm to truth eternal honour won
The first, in virtue's cause his life resigned,

By Heaven pronounced the wisest of mankind:

* Porto Leone, the ancient Pirseum, re- I white marble, since carried by the Venetians
ceived its modern title from a large lion of I
to their arsenal.
 :

Canto III.] THE SHIPWRECK. r

35

The last, proclaimed the spark of vital fire

The soul's fine essence never could expire;

Here Solon dwelt, the philosophic sage

That fled Pisistratus' vindictive rage;

Just Aristides here maintained the cause

Whose sacred precepts shine through Solon's laws
Of all her towering structures, now alone
Some columns stand, with mantling weeds o'ergrown;
The wandering stranger near the port descries

A milk white lion of stupendous size,

 :! ; :

136 THE SHIPWRECK. \ Canto III

Of antique marble; hence the haven's name,

Unknown to modern natives whence it came.

Next in the Gulf of Engia, Corinth lies,

Whose gorgeous fabrics seemed to strike the skies;

Whom, though by tyrant victors oft subdued,

Greece, Egypt, Rome, with awful wonder viewed

Her name, for Pallas' heavenly art renowned,

Spread like the foliage which her pillars crowned
But now, in fatal desolation laid,

Oblivion o'er it draws a dismal shade.

Then further westward, on Morea's land,
Fair Misitra ! thy modern turrets stand

Ah who unmoved
! with secret woe, can tell

That here great Lacedaemon's glory fell

 : : ; ! : ; ;

Canto III. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 1 3 /

Here once she flourished, at whose trumpet's sound

War burst his chains, and nations shook around

Here brave Leonidas from shore to shore,

Through all Achaia, bade her thunders roar

He, when imperial Xerxes from afar

Advanced with Persia's sumless hosts to war,

Till Macedonia shrunk beneath his spear,

And Greece dismayed beheld the chief draw near;

He, at Thermopylae's immortal plain,

His force repelled with Sparta's glorious train

Tall Oeta saw the tyrant's conquered bands

In gasping millions bleed on hostile lands:

Thus vanquished Asia, trembling, heard thy name,

And Thebes and Athens sickened at thy fame;

Thy State, supported by Lycurgus' laws,
Gained, like thine arms, superlative applause;
Even great Epaminondas strove in vain

To curb thy spirit with a Theban chain

But ah ! how low that free-born spirit now
Thy abject sons to haughty tyrants bow;
A false, degenerate, superstitious race,

Invest thy region, and thy name disgrace.

Not distant far, Arcadia's blessed domains

Peloponnesus' circling shore contains

Thrice happy soil! where, still serenely gay,

Indulgent Flora breathed perpetual May;

Where buxom Ceres bade each fertile field

Spontaneous gifts in rich profusion yield

Then, with some rural nymph supremely blessed,

While transport glowed in each enamoured breast,

 ; :

138 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

Each faithful shepherd told his tender pain,

And sung of sylvan sports in artless strain;

Soft as the happy swain's enchanting lay

That pipes among the shades of Endermay :*

Now, sad reverse ! Oppression's iron hand

Enslaves her natives, and despoils her land;

In lawless rapine bred, a sanguine train
With midnight ravage scour the uncultured plain.

Westward of these, beyond the isthmus, lies

The long-sought Isle of Ithacus the wise;

Where fair Penelope, her absent lord,

Full twice ten years, with faithful love deplored.

Though many a princely heart her beauty won,

She, guarded only by a stripling son,

Each bold attempt of suitor-kings repelled,

And undefiled the nuptial contract held

With various arts to win her love they toiled,

But all their wiles by virtuous fraud she foiled;

True to her vows and resolutely chaste,

The beauteous princess triumphed at the last.

Argos, in Greece forgotten and unknown,

Still seems her cruel fortune to bemoan;
Argos, whose monarch led the Grecian hosts
Across the JEge&n main to Dardan coasts
Unhappy prince ! who, on a hostile shore,
Toil, peril, anguish, ten long winters bore;

And when to native realms restored at last,

To reap the harvest of thy labours past,

* [This compliment to his countryman I lad, "The Birks of Endermay," was omitte J
David Mallet, author of the beautiful bal- 1 by Falconer in his third edition.]
 : ;

Canto IIL\ THE SHIPWRECK. x

39

ftv<tl»->'

There found a perjured friend, and faithless wife,

Who sacrificed to impious lust thy life

Fast by Arcadia stretch these desert plains,

And o'er the land a gloomy tyrant reigns.

Next the fair Isle of Helena is seen,*

Where adverse winds detained the Spartan queen

For whom, in arms combined, the Grecian host,

With vengeance fired, invaded Phrygia's coast;

For whom so long they laboured to destroy

The lofty turrets of imperial Troy;

Now known by the name of Macronisi.

 : : :

140 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

Here driven by Juno's rage the hapless dame,

Forlorn of heart, from ruined Ilion came:
The port an image bears of Parian stone

Of ancient fabric, but of date unknown.

Due east from this appears the immortal shore
That sacred Phoebus and Diana bore,
Delos! through all the ^Egean seas renowned,

Whose coast the rocky Cyclades surround;

By Phoebus honoured, and by Greece revered,

Her hallowed groves even distant Persia feared

But now a silent unfrequented land,

No human footstep marks the trackless sand.
Thence to the north, by Asia's western bound,
Fair Lemnos stands, with rising marble crowned;
Where, in her rage, avenging Juno hurled
Ill-fated Vulcan from the ethereal world
There his eternal anvils first he reared;
Then, forged by Cyclopean art, appeared
Thunders, that shook the skies w ith dire alarms,
T

And, formed by skill divine, immortal arms;

Here, with the vilest of the empyreal race,
A wretch deformed, devoid of every grace,
In wedlock lived the beauteous Queen of Love;
Can such sensations heavenly bosoms move!
Eastward of this appears the Dardan shore,
That once the imperial towers of Ilium bore,
Illustrious Troy! renowned in every clime
Through the long records of succeeding time;
Who saw protecting gods from heaven descend
Full oft, thy royal bulwarks to defend
 : ; !: !

Canto III.} THE SHIPWRECK. I U

Though chiefs unnumbered in her cause were slain,

With Fate the gods and heroes fought in vain

That refuge of perfidious Helen's shame

At midnight was involved in Grecian flame;
And now, by Time's deep ploughshare harrowed o'er,

The seat of sacred Troy is found no more

No trace of her proud fabrics now remains,
But corn and vines enrich her cultured plains;
Silver Scamander laves the verdant shore,

Scamander, oft o'erflowed with hostile gore.

Not far removed from Ilion's famous land,

In counter-view appears the Thracian strand,
Where beauteous Hero, from the turret's height,

Displayed her cresset each revolving night;

Whose gleam directed loved Leander o'er

The rolling Hellespont to Asia's shore

Till, in a fated hour, on Thracia's coast,

She saw her lover's lifeless body tossed

Then felt her bosom agony severe,

Her eyes, sad gazing, poured the incessant tear;

O'erwhelmed with anguish, frantic with despair,

She beat her beauteous breast, and tore her hair;

On dear Leander's name in vain she cried,

Then headlong plunged into the parting tide :

The parting tide received the lovely weight,

And proudly flowed, exulting in its freight

Far west of Thrace, beyond the ^Egean main,

Remote from ocean, lies the Delphic plain:

The sacred oracle of Phcebus there

High o'er the mount arose, divinely fair!

 ; : ; ; : :

142 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

Achaian marble formed the gorgeous pile,

August the fabric! elegant its style!

On brazen hinges turned the silver doors,

And chequered marble paved the polished floors;

The roof, where storied tablature appeared,

On columns of Corinthian mould was reared
Of shining porphyry the shafts were framed,

And round the hollow dome bright jewels flamed

Apollo's priests before the holy shrine

Suppliant poured forth their orisons divine,

To front the sun's declining ray 'twas placed,

With golden harps and branching laurels graced

Around the fane, engraved by Vulcan's hand,

The Sciences and Arts were seen to stand;

Here ^Esculapius' snake displayed his crest,

And burning glories sparkled on his breast;

While from his eyes' insufferable light,

Disease and Death recoiled in headlong flight:

Of this great temple, through all time renowned,

Sunk in oblivion, no remains are found.
Contiguous here, with hallowed woods o'erspread,
Parnassus lifts to heaven its honoured head;
There roses blossom in eternal spring,

And strains celestial feathered warblers sing

Apollo, here, bestows the unfading wreath

Here zephyrs aromatic odours breathe,

They o'er Castalian plains diffuse perfume,

Where round the scene perennial laurels bloom

Fair daughters of the sun, the sacred Nine !

Here wake to ecstasy their songs divine,

 :

Canto III.] THE SHIPWRECK. 1 43

Or bid the Paphian lute mellifluous play,

And tune to plaintive love the liquid lay;

Their numbers every mental storm control,
And lull to harmony the afflicted soul;

With heavenly balm the tortured breast compose,

And soothe the agony of latent woes.
The verdant shades that Helicon surround,

On rosy gales seraphic tunes resound;

Perpetual summers crown the happy hours,
Sweet as the breath that fans Elysian flowers
 —— :
!

144 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

Here pleasure dances in an endless round,

And love and joy, ineffable, abound.

IV. Stop, wandering thought ! methinks I feel their

strains

Diffuse delicious languor through my veins :

Adieu, ye flowery vales and fragrant scenes,

Delightful bowers and ever-vernal greens !

Adieu, ye streams ! that o'er enchanted ground

In lucid maze the Aonian hill surround;
Ye fairy scenes ! where fancy loves to dwell,
And young delight; for ever, oh, farewell

he soul with tender luxury you fill,

And o'er the sense Lethean dews distil

Awake, O Memory ! from the inglorious dream,

With brazen lungs resume the kindling theme;
Collect thy powers, arouse thy vital fire,

Ye Spirits of the Storm my verse inspire !

Hoarse as the whirlwinds that enrage the main,

In torrent pour along the swelling strain.

Now, through the parting wave, impetuous bore,

The scudding vessel stemmed the Athenian shore;

The pilots, as the waves behind her swell,

Still with the wheeling stern their force repel;

For this assault should either quarter * feel,

Again to flank the tempest she might reel

The steersmen every bidden turn apply,
To right and left the spokes alternate fly

* The quarter is the hinder part of a ship's side ; or that part which is near the stern.
 — ;: :: : : :

Canto TIL] THE SHIP WRECK. 145

Thus, when some conquered host retreats in fear,

The bravest leaders guard the broken rear;

Indignant they retire, and long oppose

Superior armies that around them close;
Still shield the flanks, the routed squadrons join,

And guide the flight in one continued line

Thus they direct the flying bark before

The impelling floods, that lash her to the shore

High o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire,

Uprolled in hills of fluctuating fire;

With labouring throes she rolls on either side,

And dips her gunnels in the yawning tide ;

Her joints unhinged in palsied languors play,

As ice-flakes part beneath the noon-tide ray

The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds,

And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds ;

From wintry magazines that sweep the sky,

Descending globes of hail impetuous fly

High on the masts, with pale and livid rays,

Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze

The ethereal dome, in mournful pomp arrayed,

Now buried lies beneath impervious shade,

Now, flashing round intolerable light,

Redoubles all the horror of the night

Such terror Sinai's trembling hill o'erspread,

When heaven's loud trumpet sounded o'er its head

It seemed, the wrathful angel of the wind
Had all the horrors of the skies combined,
And here, to one ill-fated ship opposed,
At once the dreadful magazine disclosed
 — —
: ; ; ;

146 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto IIL

And lo ! tremendous o'er the deep he springs,

The inflaming sulphur flashing from his wings !

Hark ! his strong voice the dismal silence breaks,

Mad Chaos from the chains of Death awakes :

Loud, and more loud, the rolling peals enlarge,

And blue on deck the fiery tides discharge;
There, all aghast, the shivering wretches stood,

While chill suspense and fear congealed their blood;

Wide bursts in dazzling sheets the living flame,

And dread concussion rends the ethereal frame;

Sick Earth, convulsive, groans from shore to shore,
And Nature, shuddering, feels the horrid roar.
Still the sad prospect rises on my sight,

Revealed in all its mournful shade and light;

Even now my ear with quick vibration feels

The explosion burst in strong rebounding peals

Swift through my pulses glides the kindling fire,

As lightning glances on the electric wire

Yet ah ! the languid colours vainly strive

To bid the scene in native hues revive.

But lo ! at last, from tenfold darkness born,
Forth issues o'er the wave the weeping morn
Hail, sacred vision ! who, on orient wings
The cheering dawn of light propitious brings
All Nature, smiling, hailed the vivid ray

That gave her beauties to returning day,

All but our ship ! which, groaning on the tide,

No kind relief, no gleam of hope descried
For now in front her trembling inmates see

The hills of Greece emerging on the lee

 ! ! ;

Canto III] THE SHIPWRECK. 147

So the lost lover views that fatal morn

On which, for ever from his bosom torn,

The maid adored resigns her blooming charms

To bless with love some happier rival's arms
So to Eliza dawned that cruel day
That tore ^Eneas from her sight away,
That saw him parting never to return,

Herself in funeral flames decreed to burn.

O yet in clouds, thou genial source of light

Conceal thy radiant glories from our sight,

Go, with thy smile adorn the happy plain,

And gild the scenes where health and pleasure reign:
But let not here, in scorn, thy wanton beam
Insult the dreadful grandeur of my theme
 —
: : :

148 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

While shoreward now the bounding vessel flies,

Full in her van St. George's cliffs arise;

High o'er the rest a pointed crag is seen,

That hung projecting o'er a mossy green;

Huge breakers on the larboard bow appear,

And full a-head its eastern ledges bear

To steer more eastward Albert still commands,

And shun, if possible, the fatal strands

Nearer and nearer now the danger grows,

And all their skill relentless fates oppose
For while more eastward they direct the prow,

Enormous waves the quivering deck o'erflow;

While, as she wheels, unable to subdue

Her sallies, still they dread her broaching-to * :

Alarming thought ! for now no more a-lee

Her trembling side could bear the invading sea,

And if pursuing waves she scuds before,
Headlong she runs upon the frightful shore;

A shore, where shelves and hidden rocks abound,

Where death in secret ambush lurks around

Not half so dreadful to ^Eneas' eyes

The straits of Sicily were seen to rise,

When Palinurus from the helm descried

The rocks of Scylla on his eastern side,

While in the west, with hideous yawn disclosed,

His onward path Charybdis' gulf opposed ;

* The great difficulty of steering the ship often forces her stern round, and brings her
at this time before the wind, is occasioned broadside to the wind and sea : this is an
by its striking her on the quarter, when she effect of the same cause which is explained
makes the least angle on either side which ; in the last note of the second canto.
 : : :

Canto III.] THE SHIPWRECK. 149

The double danger he alternate viewed,

And cautiously his arduous track pursued

Thus, while to right and left destruction lies,

Between the extremes the daring vessel flies.

With terrible irruption bursting o'er

The marble cliffs, tremendous surges roar;

Hoarse through each winding creek the tempest raves,

And hollow rocks repeat the groan of waves

Should once the bottom strike this cruel shore,

The parting ship that instant is no more;

Nor she alone, but with her all the crew

Beyond relief are doomed to perish too

But haply she escapes the dreadful strand,

Though scarce ten fathoms distant from the land;

Swift as the weapon quits the Scythian bow

She cleaves the burning billows with her prow,
And forward hurrying with impetuous haste,
Borne on the tempest's wings the isle she passed:
With longing eyes, and agony of mind,
The sailors view this refuge left behind;
Happy to bribe with India's richest ore

A safe accession to that barren shore-

When in the dark Peruvian mine confined,
Lost to the cheerful commerce of mankind,
The groaning captive wastes his life away
For ever exiled from the realms of day,
Not half such pangs his bosom agonize
When up to distant light he rolls his eyes,

Where the broad sun, in his diurnal way

Imparts to all beside his vivid ray,
 [Canto III
*5<> THE SHIPWRECK.

While, all forlorn, the victim pines in vain

For scenes he never shall possess again.

now Athenian mountains they descry,

V. But
And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high,

defaced,
Where marble columns, long by time
are placed;
Moss-covered, on the lofty Cape
There reared by fair devotion to sustain
fane;
In elder times Tritonia's sacred
 :: : ! 1

Canto III. ] THE SHIPWRECK. 1 5

The circling beach in murderous form appears,

Decisive goal of all their hopes and fears

The seamen now in wild amazement see

The scene of ruin rise beneath the lee;

Swift from their minds elapsed all dangers past,

As dumb with terror they behold the last

And now, while winged with ruin from on high

Through the rent cloud the ragged lightnings fly,

A flash, quick glancing on the nerves of light,

Struck the pale helmsman with eternal night:

Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan behind,

Touched with compassion, gazed upon the blind;

And, while around his sad companions crowd,

He guides the unhappy victim to the shroud
" Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend!" he cries;
" Thy only succour on the mast relies."

The helm, bereft of half its vital force,

Now scarce subdued the wild unbridled course;

Quick to the abandoned wheel Arion came

The ship's tempestuous sallies to reclaim:

The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh,

Seems more impatient o'er the waves to fly;

Fate spurs her on !

—Thus, issuing from afar,

Advances to the sun some blazing star,

And, as it feels the attraction's kindling force,

Springs onward with accelerated course.

The moment fraught with fate approaches fast

While thronging sailors climb each quivering mast;

The ship no longer now must stem the land,

And, "hard a starboard!" is the last command:

 : ! ;:

*5 2 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III

While every suppliant voice to Heaven applies,

The prow swift wheeling to the westward flies;

Twelve sailors, on the foremast who depend,

High on the platform of the top ascend,

Fatal retreat ! for, while the plunging prow

Immerges headlong in the wave below,
Down pressed, by watery weight the bowsprit bends,
And from above the stem deep-crashing rends
Beneath her bow the floating ruins lie;
The foremast totters, unsustained on high,

And now the ship, forelifted by the sea,

Hurls the tall fabric backward o'er her lee;

While, in the general wreck, the faithful stay *

Drags the main-topmast by the cap t away
Flung from the mast, the seamen strive in vain

Through hostile floods their vessel to regain;

Weak hope, alas !

—they buffet long the wave,

And grasp at life, though sinking in the grave;

Till all exhausted, and bereft of strength,

O'erpowered they yield to cruel fate at length

The burying waters close around their head,

They sink ! for ever numbered with the dead.

Those who remain, the weather shrouds embrace,

Nor longer mourn their lost companions' case;
Transfixed with terror at the approaching doom,
Self-pity in their breasts alone has room

* The main top-mast stay comes to the wood, used to confine the upper and lower
fore-mast head, and consequently depends masts together, as the one is raised at the
upon the fore-mast as its support. head of the other. The principal caps of a
t The cap is a strong, thick block of ship are those of the lower masts.
 : ! —
:

Canto III. ] THE SHIPWRE CK. 1 53

Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon, near

With young Arion, on the mast appear
Even they, amid the unspeakable distress,

In every look distracting thoughts confess,

In every vein the refluent blood congeals,
And every bosom mortal terror feels;

Begirt with all the horror of the main

They viewed the adjacent shore, but viewed in vain:

Such torments, in the drear abodes of hell,

Where sad Despair laments with rueful yell,

Such torments agonize the damned breast,

While fancy views the mansions of the blest.

For Heaven's sweet help their suppliant cries implore,

But Heaven relentless deigns to help no more.
It comes ! the dire catastrophe draws near,

Lashed furious on by destiny severe

The ship hangs hovering on the verge of death,
Hell yawns, rocks rise, and breakers roar beneath!
In vain, alas ! the sacred shades of yore

Would arm the mind with philosophic lore;

In vain they'd teach us, at the latest breath

To smile serene amid the pangs of death

Even Zeno's self, and Epictetus old,

This fell abyss had shuddered to behold.

Had Socrates, for godlike virtue famed,
And wisest of the sons of man proclaimed.
Beheld the scene of frenzy and distress,

His soul had trembled to its last recess !

O yet confirm my heart, ye powers above,

This last tremendous shock of fate to prove—
 ! :

154 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

The tottering frame of reason yet sustain,

Nor let this total ruin whirl my brain

In vain the cords and axes were prepared,
For every wave now smites the quivering yard;*
High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade,
Then on her burst in terrible cascade;

Across the foundered deck o'erwhelming roar,

And foaming, swelling, bound upon the shore.
Swift up the mountain billow now she flies,

Her shattered top half-buried in the skies;

Borne o'er a latent reef the hull impends,

Then thundering on the marble crags descends:

Her ponderous bulk the dire concussion feels,

And o'er upheaving surges wounded reels—

Again she plunges ! hark! a second shock
Bilges the splitting vessel on the rock:
Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,

The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes

In wild despair; while yet another stroke,

With strong convulsion rends the solid oak
Ah, Heaven! —behold her crashing ribs divide !

She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide.

Oh, were it mine with sacred Maro's art

To wake to sympathy the feeling heart,

Like him, the smooth and mournful verse to dress

In all the pomp of exquisite distress;

Then, too severely taught by cruel fate

To share in all the perils I relate,

* The sea at this time ran so high, that I mast head without being washed over-'
it was impossible to descend from the I board.
Canto III. \ THE SHIPWRECK. 155

Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore

The impervious horrors of a leeward shore.

As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung,

Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung:

Some, struggling, on a broken crag were cast,

And there by oozy tangles grappled fast;

Awhile they bore the o'erwhelming billows' rage,

Unequal combat with their fate to wage;
 6 : ; ! ! —
;
:: ! : :

1 5 THE SHIPWRECK, [Canto III,

Till all benumbed, and feeble, they forego

Their slippery hold, and sink to shades below

Some, from the main yard-arm impetuous thrown
On marble ridges, die without a groan
Three with Palemon on their skill depend,
And from the wreck on oars and rafts descend;
Now on the mountain-wave on high they ride,

Then downward plunge beneath the involving tide;

Till one, who seems in agony to strive,

The whirling breakers heave on shore alive

The rest a speedier end of anguish knew,

And pressed the stony beach —a lifeless crew
Next, O unhappy chief! the eternal doom
Of Heaven decreed thee to the briny tomb
What scenes of misery torment thy view
What painful struggles of thy dying crew

Thy perished hopes all buried in the flood,

O'erspread with corses, red with human blood !

So pierced with anguish hoary Priam gazed,

When Troy's imperial domes in ruin blazed

While he, severest sorrow doomed to feel,

Expired beneath the victor's murdering steel

Thus with his helpless partners to the last,

Sad refuge ! Albert grasps the floating mast.

His soul could yet sustain this mortal blow,
But droops, alas ! beneath superior woe
For now strong nature's sympathetic chain
Tugs at his yearning heart with powerful strain

His faithful wife, for ever doomed to mourn

For him, alas ! who never shall return,
 — : :

Canto III.'] THE SHIPWRECK. 157

To black Adversity's approach exposed;

With want, and hardships unforeseen, enclosed;
His lovely daughter, left without a friend
Her innocence to succour and defend,
By youth and indigence set forth a prey
To lawless guilt, that flatters to betray

While these reflections rack his feeling mind,

Rodmond, who hung beside, his grasp resigned;

And, as the tumbling waters o'er him rolled,

His outstretched arms the master's legs enfold

Sad Albert feels the dissolution near,

And strives in vain his fettered limbs to clear,

For death bids every clenching joint adhere

All faint, to Heaven he throws his dying eyes,

And, "Oh protect my wife and child!" he cries-
 —— ! !;
; : ; !

158 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

The gushing streams roll back the unfinished sound,

He gasps ! and sinks amid the vast profound.
Five only left of all the shipwrecked throng

Yet ride the mast which shoreward drives along

With these Arion still his hold secures,
And all the assaults of hostile waves endures :

O'er the dire prospect as for life he strives,

He looks if poor Palemon yet survives

" Ah, wherefore, trusting to unequal art,

Didst thou, incautious ! from the wreck depart %

Alas ! these rocks all human skill defy,

Who strikes them once, beyond relief must die

And now sore wounded, thou perhaps art tossed

On these, or in some oozy cavern lost."

Thus thought Arion ; anxious gazing round

In vain, his eyes no more Palemon found
The demons of destruction hover nigh,

And thick their mortal shafts commissioned fly :

When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway,

Two, next Arion, furious tears away;
Hurled on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed
And, groaning, cling upon the elusive weed
Another billow bursts in boundless roar
Arion sinks ! and Memory views no more.
Ha total night and horror here preside,
!

My stunned ear tingles to the whizzing tide

It is the funeral knell ! and gliding near
Methinks the phantoms of the dead appear
But lo ! emerging from the watery grave
Again they float incumbent on the wave,
 — ; ; ; —

Canto III. ] THE SHIP WRE CK. 159

Again the dismal prospect opens round

The wreck, the shore, the dying, and the drowned !

And see ! enfeebled by repeated shocks,

Those two, who scramble on the adjacent rocks,

Their faithless hold no longer can retain,

They sink o'erwhelmed, and never rise again !

Two with Arion yet the mast upbore,

That now above the ridges reached the shore
Still trembling to descend, they downward gaze,
With horror pale, and torpid with amaze :

The floods recoil ! the ground appears below,

And life's faint embers now rekindling glow ;

Awhile they wait the exhausted waves retreat,

Then climb slow up the beach with hands and feet

O Heaven ! delivered by whose sovereign hand

Still on destruction's brink they shuddering stand,
Receive the languid incense they bestow,
That, damp with death, appears not yet to glow
To Thee each soul the warm oblation pays
With trembling ardour of unequal praise !

In every heart dismay with wonder strives,

And hope the sickened spark of life revives,

Her magic powers their exiled health restore,

Till horror and despair are felt no more.

Roused by the blustering tempest of the night,

A troop of Grecians mount Colonna's height

When, gazing down with horror on the flood,

Full to their view the scene of ruin stood

The surf with mangled bodies strewed around,

And those yet breathing on the sea-washed ground :
 ! ! ; ; —
; ; —:

160 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

Though lost to science and the nobler arts,

Yet Nature's lore informed their feeling hearts

Straight down the vale with hastening steps they hied,

The unhappy sufferers to assist and guide.

. Meanwhile those three escaped, beneath explore
The first adventurous youth who reached the shore,

Panting, with eyes averted from the day,

Prone, helpless, on the tangly beach he lay
It is Palemon ! oh, what tumults roll

With hope and terror in Arion's soul

" If yet unhurt he lives again to view

His friend, and this sole remnant of our crew,

With us to travel through this foreign zone,

And share the future good or ill unknown?"

Arion thus ; but ah, sad doom of fate
That bleeding Memory sorrows to relate

While yet afloat, on some resisting rock

His ribs were dashed, and fractured with the shock

Heart-piercing sight ! those cheeks so late arrayed
In beauty's bloom, are pale with mortal shade
Distilling blood his lovely breast o'erspread,
And clogged the golden tresses of his head
Nor yet the lungs by this pernicious stroke

Were wounded, or the vocal organs broke.

Down from his neck, with blazing gems arrayed,

Thy image, lovely Anna ! hung portrayed

The unconscious figure, smiling all serene,

Suspended in a golden chain was seen :

Hadst thou, soft maiden ! in this hour of woe

Beheld him writhing from the deadly blow,
Canto TIL] THE SHIPV/RECK. 161

What force of art, what language could express

Thine agony, thine exquisite distress?

But thou, alas ! art doomed to weep in vain

For him thine eyes shall never see again.

With dumb amazement pale, Arion gazed,

And cautiously the wounded youth upraised ;

Palemon then, with cruel pangs oppressed,

In faltering accents thus his friend addressed :

" Oh, rescued from destruction late so nigh,

Beneath whose fatal influence doomed I lie \

ii
 ; : —— ! ;: !

1 62 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III

Are we then, exiled to this last retreat

Of life, unhappy ! thus decreed to meet?

Ah ! how unlike what yester-morn enjoyed,

Enchanting hopes ! for ever now destroyed ;

For wounded, far beyond all healing power,

Palemon dies, and this his final hour
By those fell breakers, where in vain I strove,

At once cut off from fortune, life, and love

Far other scenes must soon present my sight,

That lie deep buried yet in tenfold night

Ah ! wretched father of a wretched son,

Whom thy paternal prudence has undone
How will remembrance of this blinded care
Bend down thy head with anguish and despair !

Such dire effects from avarice arise

That deaf to Nature's voice, and vainly wise.

With force severe endeavours to control

The noblest passions that inspire the soul

But, O Thou Sacred Power ! whose law connects

The eternal chain of causes and effects,

Let not Thy chastening ministers of rage

Afflict with sharp remorse his feeble age :

And you, Arion ! who with these the last

Of all our crew survive the Shipwreck past

Ah ! cease to mourn, those friendly tears restrain,

Nor give my dying moments keener pain
Since Heaven may soon thy wandering steps restore

When parted hence, to England's distant shore ;

Shouldst thou, the unwilling messenger of fate,

To him the tragic story first relate \

 ! ; ——— ; ; ;

Canto III.] THE SHIPWRECK. 1^3

Oh ! friendship's generous ardour then suppress,

Nor hint the fatal cause of my distress ;

Nor let each horrid incident sustain

The lengthened tale to aggravate his pain :

Ah ! then remember well my last request

For her who reigns for ever in my breast

Yet let him prove a father and a friend,

The helpless maid to succour and defend

Say, I this suit implored with parting breath,

So Heaven befriend him at his hour of death 1

But, oh ! to lovely Anna shouldst thou tell

What dire untimely end thy friend befell

Draw o'er the dismal scene soft pity's veil,

And lightly touch the lamentable tale :

Say that my love, inviolably true,

No change, no diminution ever knew

Lo ! her bright image pendent on my neck
Is all Palemon rescued from the w reck
T

Take it, and say, when panting in the wave,

I struggled life and this alone to save !

" My soul, that fluttering hastens to be free,

Would yet a train of thoughts impart to thee,

But strives in vain ; the chilling ice of death

Congeals my blood, and chokes the stream of breath

Resigned, she quits her comfortless abode

To course that long, unknown, eternal road
O sacred source of ever-living light
Conduct the weary wanderer in her flight ;

Direct her onward to that peaceful shore,

Where peril, pain, and death, are felt no more.
 ; ; ;;; : ;

164 THE SHIPWRECK. [Canto III.

" When thou some tale of hapless love shalt hear,

That steals from Pity's eye the melting tear
Of two chaste hearts, by mutual passion joined,

To absence, sorrow, and despair consigned

Oh ! then, to swell the tides of social woe

That heal the afflicted bosom they o'erflow,

While Memoiy dictates, this sad Shipwreck tell,

And what distress thy wretched friend befell

Then, while in streams of soft compassion drowned,

The swains lament, and maidens weep around
While lisping children, touched with infant fear,

With wonder gaze, and drop the unconscious tear ;

Oh ! then this moral bid their souls retain,

All thoughts of happiness on earth are vain !" *

The last faint accents trembled on his tongue,

That now inactive to the palate clung

His bosom heaves a mortal groan — he dies !

And shades eternal sink upon his eyes.

As thus defaced in death Palemon lay,

Arion gazed upon the lifeless clay

Transfixed he stood ; with awful terror filled,

While down his cheek the silent drops distilled : —

" O ill-starred votary of unspotted truth !

Untimely perished in the bloom of youth;

Should e'er thy friend arrive on Albion's land,

He will obey, though painful, thy command

-"sed scilicet ultima semper [" But no frail man, however great or
Expectanda dies homini dicique beattis
; high,
Ante obitum nemo supre7naque funera Can be concluded blessed before he
debet." die."
Ovid, Met., lib. iii. Addison.]
 : : ! ; "

Canto TIL] THE SHIPWRECK. 165

His tongue the dreadful story shall display,

And all the horrors of this dismal day

Disastrous day ! what ruin hast thou bred,

What anguish to the living and the dead
How hast thou left the widow all forlorn;

And ever doomed the orphan child to mourn,

Through life's sad journey hopeless to complain:

Can sacred justice these events ordain?

But, O my soul ! avoid that wondrous maze

Where reason, lost in endless error, strays;

As through this thorny vale of life we run,

Great Cause of all Effects, Thy will be done !

Now had the Grecians on the beach arrived,

To aid the helpless few who yet survived ;

While passing, they behold the waves o'erspread

With shattered rafts and corses of the dead
Three still alive, benumbed and faint they find,
In mournful silence on a rock reclined
The generous natives, moved with social pain,
The feeble strangers in their arms sustain;
With pitying sighs their hapless lot deplore,

And lead them trembling from the fatal shore.

 ;

1 66 THE SHIPWRECK.

OCCASIONAL ELEGY.
The scene of death is closed ! the mournful strains

Dissolve in dying languor on the ear;

Yet Pity weeps, yet Sympathy complains,
And dumb Suspense awaits, o'erwhelmed with fear.

But the sad Muses with prophetic eye

At once the future and the past explore;
Their harps oblivion's influence can defy,
And waft the spirit to the eternal shore.

Then, O Palemon ! if thy shade can hear

The voice of friendship still lament thy doom,

Yet to the sad oblations bend thine ear
That rise in vocal incense o'er thy tomb.

In vain, alas ! the gentle maid shall weep,

While secret anguish nips her vital bloom;

O'er her soft frame shall stern diseases creep,
And give the lovely victim to the tomb.

Relentless frenzy shall the father sting,

Untaught in Virtue's school distress to bear

 — ; ; ;
::

THE SHIPWRECK. 167

Severe remorse his tortured soul shall wring;

'Tis his to groan and perish in despair.*

Ye lost companions of distress, adieu !

Your toils, and pains, and dangers are no more;

The tempest now shall howl unheard by you,
While ocean smites in vain the trembling shore

On you the blast, surcharged with rain and snow,

In Winter's dismal nights no more shall beat;

Unfelt by you the vertic sun may glow,
And scorch the panting earth with baneful heat

No more the joyful maid, with sprightly strain,

Shall wake the dance to give you welcome home:

Nor hopeless love impart undying pain,
When far from scenes of social joy you roam;

No more on yon wide watery waste you stray,

While hunger and disease your life consume,

While parching thirst, that burns without allay,

Forbids the blasted rose of health to bloom;

[* We have given the Elegy as it appears O'er her soft frame diseases sternly crept,
in the author's latest edition, In the previous And gave the lovely victim to the tomb.
impression the following verses (which un-
doubtedly mar the poetical effect) follow the
A longer date of woe, the widowed wife
third verse :
Her lamentable lot afflicted bore
Yet both were rescued from the chains of
" From young Arion life
first the news received
With terror, pale unhappy Anna read Before Arion reached his native shore !"

With inconsolable distress she grieved, The father unrelenting phrenzy stung,
And from her" cheek the rose of beauty Untaught in Virtue's school distress to
fled:
bear
Severe remorse his tortured bosom wrung,
In vain, alas! the gentle virgin wept, He languished, groaned, and perished in
Corrosive anguish nipt her vital bloom despair."]
 ; : : ; :: ;;

168 THE SHIPWRECK.

No more you feel Contagion's mortal breath,
That taints the realms with misery severe,
No more behold pale Famine, scattering death,
With cruel ravage desolate the year

The thundering drum, the trumpet's swelling strain

Unheard, shall form the long embattled line

Unheard, the deep foundations of the main

Shall tremble, when the hostile squadrons join.

Since grief, fatigue, and hazards still molest

The wandering vassals of the faithless deep

Oh ! happier now escaped to endless rest,

Than we who still survive to wake and weep

What though no funeral pomp, no borrowed tear,

Your hour of death to gazing crowds shall tell

Nor weeping friends attend your sable bier,

Who sadly listen to the passing bell;

The tutored sigh, the vain parade of woe,

No real anguish to the soul impart

And oft, alas ! the tear that friends bestow,

Belies the latent feelings of the heart

What though no sculptured pile your name displays,

Like those who perish in their country's cause

What though no epic Muse in living lays

Records your dreadful daring with applause \

 —

THE SHIPWRECK. i6g

Full oft the flattering marble bids renown

With blazoned trophies deck the spotted name;
And oft, too oft, the venal Muses crown
The slaves of Vice with never-dying fame

Yet shall Remembrance from Oblivion's veil

Relieve your scene, and sigh with grief sincere;

And soft Compassion at your tragic tale

In silent tribute pay her kindred tear.

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