Whose cables, loose aloft and fix'd below,

Rot with the sea-weed, floating to and fro!

Thy Fears-are wrecks that strew the fatal surge,
Whose whirlpools swallow, or whose currents urge
Adventurous barks on rocks, that lurk at rest,

Where the blue halcyon builds her foam-light nest;
Or strand them on illumined shoals, that gleam
Like drifted gold in summer's cloudless beam.
Thus would thy race, beneath their parent's eye,
Live without knowledge, without prospect die.
But when Religion bids her spirit breathe,

And opens bliss above and woe beneath;

When God reveals his march through Nature's night,

His steps are beauty, and his presence light,

His voice is life:- the dead in conscience start;

They feel a new creation in the heart.

Ah! then, Humanity, thy hopes, thy fears,

How changed, how wond'rous!-On this tide of years,

Though the frail barks, in which thine offspring sail

Their day, their hour, their moment, with the gale,

Must perish;

shipwreck only sets them free;

With joys unmeasured as eternity,

They ply on seas of glass their golden oars,
And pluck immortal fruits along the shores;
Nor shall their cables fail, their anchors rust,
Who wait the resurrection of the just:

Moor'd on the rock of ages, though decay

Moulder the weak terrestrial frame away,

The trumpet sounds,-and lo! wherever spread,
Earth, air, and ocean render back their dead,

And souls with bodies, spiritual and divine,

In the new heavens, like stars for ever shine.

These are thine Hopes :- thy Fears what tongue can

tell?

Behold them graven on the gates of Hell:

"The wrath of God abideth here: his breath

"Kindled the flames :-this is the second death."

'Twas Mercy wrote the lines of judgement there;
None who from earth can read them may despair!
Man! — let the warning strike presumption dumb;
Awake, arise, escape the wrath to come;

No resurrection from that grave shall be;

The worm within is-immortality.

The terrors of Jehovah, and his grace,

The Brethren bear to earth's remotest race.
And now, exulting on their swift career,
The northern waters narrowing in the rear,
They rise upon the' Atlantic flood, that rolls
Shoreless and fathomless between the poles,
Whose waves the east and western world divide,
Then gird the globe with one circumfluent tide;
For mighty Ocean, by whatever name

Known to vain

man, is every

where the same,

And deems all regions by his gulphs embraced

But vassal tenures of his sovereign waste.

Clear shines the sun; the surge, intensely blue,

Assumes by day heaven's own aërial hue;

Buoyant and beautiful, as through a sky,

On balanced wings, behold the vessel fly;
Invisibly impell'd, as though it felt

A soul, within its heart of oak that dwelt,

Which broke the billows with spontaneous force,

Ruled the free elements, and chose its course.

Not so:-and yet along the trackless realm,

A hand unseen directs the' unconscious helm;
The Power that sojourn'd in the cloud by day,

And fire by night, on Israel's desert way;

That Power the obedient vessel owns :

His will,

Tempest and calm, and death and life fulfil.

Day following day the current smoothly flows; Labour is but refreshment from repose;

Perils are vanish'd; every fear resign'd;

Peace walks the waves, Hope carols on the wind;

And Time so sweetly travels o'er the deep,

They feel his motion like the fall of sleep

On weary limbs, that, stretch'd in stillness, seem To float upon the eddy of a stream,

Then sink,-to wake in some transporting dream.

Thus, while the Brethren far in exile roam, Visions of Greenland shew their future home. -Now a dark speck, but brightening as it flies,

A vagrant sea-fowl glads their eager eyes:

How lovely, from the narrow deck to see

The meanest link of nature's family,

Which makes us feel, in dreariest solitude,

Affinity with all that breathe renew'd ;

At once a thousand kind emotions start,

And the blood warms and mantles round the heart!

-O'er the ship's lee, the waves in shadow seen,
Change from deep indigo to beryl green,

And wreaths of frequent weed, that slowly float,
Land to the watchful mariner denote:

Ere long the pulse beats quicker through his breast,
When, like a range of evening clouds at rest,
Iceland's grey cliffs and ragged coast he sees,

But shuns them, leaning on the southern breeze;
And while they vanish far in distance, tells
Of lakes of fire and necromancers' spells.

Strange Isle ! a moment to poetic gaze

Rise in thy majesty of rocks and bays,

Glens, fountains, caves, that seem not things of

earth,

But the wild shapes of some prodigious birth;