Like refuse on the yeast of death That bellows, raves, and boils beneath. One hapless wretch around his waist A knotted rope has loosely braced; When from the stay to which he clings The jerking mast the doomed one flings, It slips, and by the neck he swings: Death grins and glares in hideous shape, No hope, no pity, no escape! Still on and on, all day the same, Through all that brilliant summer day Beneath a sky so blithe and blue The wild white whirl of waters flew, In stunning volleys overswept And beat the black ship's yielding frame, And all around roared, tossed, and leapt Mad-wreathing swathes of snow! affray More dire than most disastrous rout Of some conceivable array
Of thronged white elephants,
Their phalanx broke in warfare waged
In Siam or the Punjaub, raged
And writhed their great white trunks about, With screams that shrill as trumpets rung, And drove destruction everywhere
In maddened terror at the shout Of turbaned hosts and torches' flare Full in their monstrous faces flung; Wide horror! but to this, no less, This furious lashing wilderness, Innocuous-seeming, transient, tame!
Still on, still on, like fiends of Hell Whiter than angels, frantic, fell, Through all that summer day the same The merciless murderous breakers came, And to the mizzen-top that swayed With every breach those breakers made, Unaided, impotent to aid,
The mates and master clung all day. There, while the sun onlooking gay Triumphant trod his bright highway,— There, till his cloudless rich decline, Faint in the blinding deafening drench Of salt waves roaring down the whine And creaking groans each grinding wrench Took from the tortured timbers, — there All day, all day, in their despair, The gently brave, the roughly good, Collected, calm and silent stood. That hideous doom they firmly face; To no unmanly moans give way, No frantic gestures; none disgrace With wild bravado, vain display, Their end, but like true men await The dread extremity of fate. Alas! and yet no tongue can tell
What thoughts of life and loved ones swell
With anguish irrepressible,
The hearts these horrors fail to quell.
The master urges them to prayer,
"No hope on earth, be heaven your care!"
And is it mockery - Oh, but mark
Those masts and crowding figures, dark Against the flush of love and rest Suffusing all the gorgeous west In tearful golden glory drest, Such soft majestic tenderness, As of a power that longs to bless With ardors of divinest breath All but one raging spot of death; For all the wide expanse beside Is blushing, beauteous as a bride, And a fierce wedding-day indeed
It seems, of Life and Death, with none to heed.
And now the foam spurts up between The starting deck-planks; downward bowed The mighty masts terrific lean; Then each with its despairing crowd Of life, with one tremendous roar Falls like a tower, - and all is o'er.
HENE'ER those southern seas I sail,
I find my eyes instinctive turning Where, pure and marvellously pale, Four sacred stars are brightly burning.
A star is set above the thorns;
Two mark the bleeding palms extended; And one the wounded feet adorns, -
In four the potent cross is blended.
One only hand had power to place The symbol there, and that immortal; Those fair, celestial fires may grace And beautify the heavenly portal.
Whatever danger I may meet
Upon the wild, disastrous ocean, Still turn my trusting eyes to greet That flaming cross with true devotion.
Nor cease, my willing heart, to give Thy prayers and every just endeavor; For only by the cross I live,
And by the cross I live forever.
[NDER the eaves of a Southern sky,
Where the cloud-roof bends to the ocean-floor,
Hid in lonely seas, the Bermoothes lie,
An emerald cluster that Neptune bore Away from the covetous earth-gods' sight, And placed in a setting of sapphire light.
Prospero's realm, and Miranda's isles, Floating to music of Ariel
Upon fantasy's billow, that glows and smiles. Flushing response to the lovely spell, - Tremulous color and outline seem
Lucent as glassed in a life-like dream.
And away and afar as in dreams we drift Glimmer the blossoming orange groves; And the dolphin-tints of the waters shift,
And the angel-fish through the pure lymph moves
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