For I can weather the roughest gale,
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat,
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what it may be?"
""Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast, " And he steered for the open sea.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his £xed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Gallilee."
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land:
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy wave
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side,
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank.
Ho! Ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this.
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
BUT when the powers descending swell'd the fight,
Then tumult rose, fierce rage, and pale affright :
Now through the trembling shores Minerva calls,
And now she thunders from the Grecian walls.
Mars hov'ring o'er his Troy, his terror shrouds,
In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds;
Now through each Trojan heart he fury pours,
With voice divine, from Ilion's topmost towers.-
Above, the Sire of Gods his thunder rolls,
And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles.
Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground,
The forests wave, the mountains nod around:
Through all her summits tremble Ida's woods,
And from their sources boil her hundred floods.
Troy's turrets totter on the rocking plain
And the toss'd navies beat the heaving main.
Deep in the dismal region of the dead,
Th' infernal monarch rears his infernal head,
Leapt from his throne, lest Neptune's arms should lay
His dark dominions open to the day;
And pour in light on Pluto's drear abodes,
Abhorr❜d by men and dreadful e'en to gods.
Such wars th' immortals wage; such horrors rend
The world's vast concave, when the gods contend.
ALL are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent;
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Cease tnen, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.
Submit. In this or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bless'd as thou canst bear :
Safe in the hand of one disposing power,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDICATED.
HEAV'N from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer Being here below:
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n :
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest :
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
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