In reverent silence the beholders wait,
Then bring him at his call both wine and meat;
And when he had refresh'd his noble heart,
He bade his host be blest, and rose up to depart.
The man amaz'd, all mildness now and tears,
Fell at the Sultan's feet with many prayers,
And begg'd him to vouchsafe to tell his slave
The reason first of that command he gave
About the light; then, when he saw the face,
Why he knelt down; and lastly, how it was
That fare so poor as his detain'd him in the place.
The Sultan said, with a benignant eye,
"Since first I saw thee come, and heard thy cry,
I could not rid me of a dread, that one
By whom such daring villanies were done,
Must be some lord of mine,-ay, e'en perhaps a son.
For this I had the light put out: but when
I saw the face, and found a stranger slain,
I knelt and thanked the sovereign Arbiter,
Whose work I had perform'd through pain and fear;
And then I rose and was refresh'd with food,
The first time since thy voice had marr'd
THE judgment was at hand. Before the sun
Gathered tempestuous clouds, which, blackening, spread
Until their blended masses overwhelmed
The hemisphere of day: and adding gloom
To night's dark empire, swift from zone to zone
Swept the vast shadow, swallowing up all light,
And covering the encircling firmament
As with a mighty pall! Low in the dust
Bowed the affrighted nations, worshipping.
Anon the o'ercharged garners of the storm
Burst with their growing burden; fierce and fast
Shot down the ponderous rain, a sheeted flood,
That slanted not before the baffled winds,
But with an arrowy and unwavering rush,
Dashed hissing earthward. Soon the rivers rose,
And roaring, fled their channels; the calm lakes
Awoke exulting from their lethargy,
And poured destruction on their peaceful shores.
The lightning flickered on the deluged air,
And feebly through the shout of gathering waves
Muttered the stifled thunder. Day nor night
Ceased the descending streams; and if the gloom
A little brightened, when the lurid morn
Rose on the starless midnight, 'twas to show
The lifting up of waters. Bird and beast
Forsook the flooded plains, and wearily
The shivering multitudes of human doomed
Toiled up before the insatiate element.
Oceans were blent, and the leviathan
Was borne aloft on the ascending seas
To where the eagle nestled. Mountains now
Were the sole land-marks, and their sides were clothed
With clustering myriads, from the weltering waste
Whose surges clasped them, to their topmost peaks,
Swathed in the stooping cloud. The hand of death
Smote millions as they climbed; yet denser grew
The crowded nations, as the encroaching waves
Narrowed their little world.
And in that hour,
Did no man aid his fellow. Love of life
Was the sole instinct, and the strong-limbed son,
With imprecations, smote the palsied sire
That clung to him for succour.
With wavering steps the precipice's brow,
And found no arm to grasp on the dread verge
O'er which she leaned and trembled. Selfishness
Sat like an incubus on every heart,
Smothering the voice of love. The giant's foot
Was on the stripling's neck; and oft despair
Grappled the ready steel, and kindred blood
Polluted the last remnant of that earth
Which God was deluging to purify.
Huge monsters from the plains, whose skeletons
The mildew of succeeding centuries
Has failed to crumble, with unwieldy strength
Crush'd through the solid crowds; and fiercest birds Beat down by the ever-rushing rain,
With blinded eyes, drenched plumes, and trailing wings Staggered unconscious o'er the trampled prey.
The mountains were submerged; the barrier chains
That mapped out nations, sank; until at length
One Titan peak alone o'ertopped the waves,
Beaconing a sunken world. And of the tribes
That blackened every Alp, one man survived:
And he stood shuddering, hopeless, shelterless,
Upon that fragment of the universe.
The surges of the universal sea
Broke on his naked feet. On his grey head,
Which fear, not time, had silvered, the black cloud
Poured its unpitying torrents; while around,
In the green twilight dimly visible,
Rolled the grim legions of the ghastly drowned,
And seemed to beckon with their tossing arms
Their brother to his doom.
And, maddened, would have leaped to their embrace,
When, lo! before him riding on the deep,
Loomed a vast fabric, and familiar sounds
Proclaimed that it was peopled. Hope once more
Cheered the wan outcast, and imploringly
He stretched his arms forth toward the floating walls,
And cried aloud for mercy. But his prayer
Man might not answer, whom his God condemned.
The ark swept onward, and the billows rose
And buried their last victim!
Then the gloom
Broke from the face of heaven, and sunlight streamed
Upon the shoreless sea, and on the roof
That rose for shelter o'er the living germ
Whose increase should repopulate a world.
THE OCEAN.
LORD BYRON.
[See page 205.]
OH! that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err;
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wield
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou;-
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.
THOMAS HOOD.
[See p. 431.]
WITH fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread-
Stitch-stitch-stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!”
"Work-work-work!
While the cock is crowing aloof;
And work-work-work
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!
"Work-work-work!
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work-work-work!
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,-
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!
"O! men with sisters dear!
O! men with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch-stitch-stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.
"But why do I talk of Death!
That phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own-
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