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Title: The shipwreck
Author: Falconer, William
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The shipwreck" ***
THE
SHIPWRECK
BY
WILLIAM FALCONER
EMBELLISHED WITH ENGRAVINGS
FROM THE DESIGNS OF
RICHᴰ. WESTALL R.A.
[Illustration: R. Westall R.A. del. Chaˢ. Heath fc.
_And,“Oh protect my Wife and Child!” he cries_—_Canto III._]
LONDON;
PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY.
1819.
THE
SHIPWRECK;
BY
WILLIAM FALCONER.
quæque ipse miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.—VIRG. ÆN. Lib. II.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE,
PICCADILLY,
BY C. WHITTINGHAM, CHISWICK.
M DCCC XV III.
CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS.
The SHIPWRECK is one of those happy productions in which talent is seen
in so exquisite adaptation to the nature of the subject, that it is
difficult to determine whether the author is the most indebted to his
subject, or the subject to the author. No one who had not passed through
the circumstances which Falconer describes, could have painted them as
he has done; and of the comparatively few who have had the opportunity
of drinking in the fearful inspiration of such scenes, and survived to
tell of them, Falconer is the first who appears to have possessed the
genius requisite to retain and embody the impression, with the vigour of
imagination and the fidelity of memory. It was not more necessary that
he should be a poet, than that he should be a seaman. He was eminently
both; and the Poem is as perfect in every technical excellence, as it is
in respect to the simplicity of its plan, the classical elegance of its
composition, and the pathos of its narrative. It is altogether a unique
production.
Falconer originally designed the Poem, (as appears from an advertisement
prefixed to the second edition, published in 1764,) for the entertainment
of “the gentlemen of the sea;” but he complains that they had not formed
one tenth of the purchasers. He printed that edition in a cheaper form,
expressly with a view to render it more acceptable to the inferior
officers. Falconer was thoroughly the seaman; he was warmly attached to
the profession, and prided himself more on his nautical science than on
his literary talents. The author of the SHIPWRECK compiled a “Universal
Dictionary of the Marine,” a work which cost him years of extraordinary
application. The SHIPWRECK is said to comprise within itself the
rudiments of navigation, so as even to claim to be considered as a
grammar of the nautical science. The correctness of the rules and maxims
laid down in the Poem, for the conduct of a ship under circumstances of
perilous emergency, render it extremely valuable to the seaman. The notes
originally affixed to the Poem, in explanation of the technical terms,
the frequent introduction and euphonous arrangement of which, form so
striking a peculiarity of the composition, were thought necessary by the
Author, on account of there being, at that time, no modern dictionaries
to which he could refer the reader, without forfeiting, by his implied
commendation of them, his claim to the professional character he had
assumed,—a claim of which he professes himself to be much more tenacious,
than of his reputation as a poet.
Fresh-water critics venture out of their element in entering upon a
minute examination of such a poem as this. The care with which it
appears to have been elaborated, has, however, left little for the
invidious notice of criticism. In a few instances, the hand of correction
has been injudiciously applied in the editions of the Poem subsequent to
its first appearance; it is conjectured, that some of the alterations
in the third edition, which are of this nature, are to be attributed to
his having left the final revision to his friend Mallet, who, although
a poet, was not a seaman. If the style of the Poem is faulty in any
respect, it is in that of the too ambitious phraseology, by which it
seems to have been Falconer’s effort to sustain the epic dignity of the
narrative. Into this fault the models of the day were adapted to seduce
any young writer, and the versification he adopted, presents a constant
temptation to artificial and inverted forms of expression. Thus, for
instance, to weigh anchor, is paraphrased in the following line:—
“Or win the anchor from its dark abode.”
The frequency of the classical allusions, by which also the Poet probably
intended to render his work more _secundum artem_ poetical, is justified
by their local propriety. As suggested by the surrounding scenery,
they seem perfectly natural, and they are introduced, generally, with
considerable skill and effect. The most pleasing parts of the Poem,
however, are those in which the narration is characterized by all
the simplicity of the seaman, rather than by the embellishments of a
half-learned taste.
Short and simple are the annals of poor ARION’S history. He was born at
Edinburgh, about the year 1730. His father was a poor but industrious
barber, who had to maintain a large family, under the distressing
circumstance of all his children, with the single exception of William,
being either deaf or dumb. Reading English, writing, and a little
arithmetic, comprised the whole of Falconer’s education, although he
afterwards acquired some knowledge of the French, Spanish, and Italian
languages, and, it is added, even of the German. When very young, he
entered on board a merchant vessel at Leith, in which he served an
apprenticeship. He was afterwards servant to Campbell, the author
of Lexiphanes, when purser of a ship, who is stated to have taken
considerable pains in improving the mind of the young seaman, and to
have subsequently felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. At what
time the calamitous event occurred, which furnished the subject of the
SHIPWRECK, has not been ascertained: he was then, it appears, employed
in the Levant trade. He continued in the merchant service till 1762. In
that year, the SHIPWRECK made its first appearance, in quarto, dedicated
to his Royal Highness Edward, Duke of York, who had hoisted his flag as
rear-admiral of the blue, on board the Princess Amelia, of eighty guns,
attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Poem immediately took
with the public, and Falconer, having, as it is said, at the Duke’s
recommendation, quitted the merchant service for the royal navy, was
soon after rated a midshipman on board the Royal George.
At the peace of 1763, the Royal George was paid off, and Falconer, in the
course of the same year, was appointed purser of the Glory frigate. Soon
after this, he married a young lady of the name of Hicks, who survived
him. From the Glory, he was, in 1767, appointed to the Swiftsure.
In 1764, he published a new edition of his Poem, in octavo, corrected and
enlarged, and, in the following year, a political satire on Lord Chatham,
Wilkes, and Churchill, of which it is enough to say, that had Falconer
never written any thing but satire, his name would long since have been
forgotten. His Universal Dictionary of the Marine, was published in 1769,
at which period he was resident in the metropolis, supporting himself
chiefly by his literary exertions. Among other resources, he is said to
have received a pittance from writing in the Critical Review, under his
countryman Mallet. He had received, the preceding year, proposals from
his friend Mr. Murray, to enter into company with him as a bookseller,
on his taking Mr. Sandby’s business in Fleet-street; it does not appear
from what cause he was led to decline the offer. While he was preparing
to publish a third edition of the SHIPWRECK, he obtained the highly
advantageous appointment of purser to the Aurora frigate, Captain Lee,
which was ordered to carry out Mr. Vansittart and the other Commissioners
to India, with the promise of being made their private secretary. The
catastrophe is well known. The Aurora frigate sailed on the 30th of
September, 1769, left the Cape on the 27th of December, and was heard
of no more. It is the most probable opinion, that she foundered in the
Mozambique channel, the dangers of which, the captain, in spite, as it
is said, of remonstrances, was rash enough, although a stranger to its
navigation, to encounter.
In 1773, a black was examined before the East India Directors, who
affirmed that he was one of five persons who had been saved from the
wreck of the Aurora, and that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks
off Mocoa.
To these particulars, for which the public are chiefly indebted to the
assiduous researches of the Rev. James Stanier Clarke, it may be added,
on the same authority, that Falconer was, in his person, about five
feet seven inches in height, of a thin light make, hard featured, and
weather-beaten, of blunt and aukward manners, but cheerful, kind, and
generous. He was, however, inclined to be satirical, and delighted in
controversy: strange characteristics of a man who was a thorough seaman
and a poet!
THE
SHIPWRECK.
INTRODUCTION.
[Illustration:
’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;
DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY EDWARD PORTBURY. PUBLISHED BY
JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.]
INTRODUCTION.
While jarring interests wake the world to arms,
And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms,
While Albion bids th’ avenging thunder roll
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;
’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;
A scene from dumb Oblivion to restore,
To Fame unknown, and new to epic lore:
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!
The fate, in lively sorrow, to deplore
Of wanderers shipwrecked on a leeward shore.
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 wintery tempests roar?
Or shall a youth approach their hallowed fane,
Stranger to Phœbus, 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 th’ 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, laved by adverse tides,
Atlantic and Pacific seas divides:
But while he measured o’er the painful race
In fortune’s wild illimitable chace,
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;
In regions where th’ 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 th’ embattled line,
The hostile ships in flaming combat join,
Where the torn vessel, wind and waves assail,
Till o’er her crew distress and death prevail.—
Such joyless toils, in early youth endured,
Th’ expanding dawn of mental day obscured,
Each genial passion of the soul oppressed,
And quenched the ardour kindling in his breast:
Then censure not severe the native song,
Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong,
Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear,
Yet truth, and human anguish deign to hear:
No laurel wreaths these lays attempt to claim,
Nor sculptur’d brass to tell the poet’s name.
And lo! the power that wakes th’ 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:
Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow
Like Juno’s birds, or Iris’ 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 th’ obscured idea pours the light;
Say, on what seas, for thou alone canst tell,
What dire mishap a fated ship befel,
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.
FIRST CANTO:
THE SCENE OF WHICH LIES NEAR THE CITY OF CANDIA.
TIME,—ABOUT FOUR DAYS AND AN HALF.
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.—III. Noon—Palemon’s History.—IV.
Sunset—Midnight—Arion’s Dream—Unmoor by Moonlight—Morning—Sun’s
Azimuth taken—Beautiful Appearance of the Ship, as seen by the
Natives from the Shore.
THE
SHIPWRECK
CANTO I.
[Illustration:
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.
DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY WILLIAM FINDEN. PUBLISHED BY
JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.]
CANTO I.
I. 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 wayward steps of Fortune they pursued,
And sought in certain ills imagined good:
Though cautioned oft her slippery path to shun,
Hope still with promised joys allured them on;
And, while they listened to her winning lore,
The softer scenes of peace could please no more:
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,
Before whose vivid intellectual ray
Distress recedes, and danger melts away:
Already British coasts appear to rise,
The chalky cliffs salute their longing eyes;
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 th’ 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 explore;
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!
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 vallies 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? }
The free-born spirit of her sons is broke, }
They bow to Ottoman’s imperious yoke; }
No longer Fame their drooping heart inspires,
For stern Oppression quenched its genial fires:
Though still her fields, with golden harvests crown’d,
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 th’ 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;
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 th’ 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 th’ autumnal equinox is o’er,
And Phœbus 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:
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 fire,
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
Th’ 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,
Aboard, confest the father of his crew!
Brave, liberal, just! the calm domestic scene
Had o’er his temper breathed a gay serene:
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 repell’d;
Or point her devious track through climes unknown,
That leads to every shore and every zone:
He saw the moon through Heaven’s blue concave glide,
And into motion charm th’ 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 th’ 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,
O’er bar, and shelve, 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.
Boisterous 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.
Th’ 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;
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 began to bloom,
When o’er it sorrow spread her sickening gloom?
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 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 sisters rove.
Hither he wandered, anxious to explore
Antiquities of nations now no more;
To penetrate each distant realm unknown,
And range excursive o’er th’ 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.
Permit my verse, ye blest 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 ship’s 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;
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.
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 th’ 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 confest;
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;
With scorn the parent eyed the lowly shade
That veiled the beauties of this charming maid.
He, by the lust of riches only moved,
Such mean connexions haughtily reproved;
Indignant he rebuked th’ 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.
With all her powers enchanting Music failed,
And Pleasure’s syren voice no more prevailed:
Long with unequal art, in vain he strove
To quench th’ ethereal flame of ardent love.
The merchant, kindling then with proud disdain,
In look, and voice, assumed an 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 th’ unbidden tear,
His bosom heaved with agony severe;
In vain with bitter sorrow he repin’d, }
No tender pity touched that sordid mind— }
To thee, brave Albert! was the charge consign’d. }
The stately ship forsaking England’s shore
To regions far remote Palemon bore.
Incapable of change, th’ 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 renown’d,
In Alexandria’s port the vessel found;
Where, anxious to review his native shore,
He on the roaring wave embarked once more.
Oft by pale Cynthia’s melancholy light
With him Palemon kept the watch of night,
In whose sad bosom many a sigh supprest
Some painful secret of the soul confest:
Perhaps Arion soon the cause divin’d,
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 th’ 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 own’d the quick’ning ore;
For in one tide their passions seemed to roll,
By kindred age and sympathy of soul.
These o’er th’ 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.
III. A sullen languor still the skies opprest,
And held th’ 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.
On deck, beneath the shading canvass spread,
Rodmond a rueful tale of wonders read
Of dragons roaring on th’ 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 crown’d,
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 o’erspread!
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.
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;
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 reclin’d,
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,
An humble habitation rose, beside
Where Thames meand’ring 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.
“This blooming maid in Virtue’s path to guide
Th’ admiring parents all their care applied:
Her spotless soul to soft affection trained,
No voice 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 drest,
The smile of maiden innocence exprest;
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:
Yon ship, rich freighted from th’ Italian shore,
To Thames’ fair banks her costly tribute bore:
While thus my father saw his ample hoard,
From this return, with recent treasures stor’d;
Me, with affairs of commerce charg’d, he sent }
To Albert’s humble mansion—soon I went! }
Too soon, alas! unconscious of th’ 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 th’ infection caught?
When, as I gazed, my faltering tongue betray’d
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;
There, while my heart’s soft anguish I revealed,
To her with tender sighs my hope appealed:
While the sweet nymph my faithful tale believed,
Her snowy breast with secret tumult heaved;
For, trained in rural scenes from earliest youth,
Nature was her’s, and innocence, and truth:
She never knew the city damsel’s art,
Whose frothy pertness charms the vacant heart.—
My suit prevail’d! 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.
“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 poignant 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 confest! the lovely maid drew near!
But, ah! what force of language can impart
Th’ 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.
“In transport lost, by trembling hope imprest,
The blushing virgin sunk upon my breast,
While her’s congenial beat with fond alarms!
Dissolving softness! Paradise of charms!
Flashed from our eyes, in warm transfusion flew
Our 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 bursts with interrupting sighs,—
For ever destined to lament in vain,
Such flattering, fond ideas entertain;
My heart through scenes of fair illusion stray’d,
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 joys, may bless thy arms:
Where, smiling o’er thee with indulgent ray,
Prosperity shall hail each new-born day:
Too well thou know’st good Albert’s niggard fate,
Ill fitted to sustain thy father’s hate.
Go then, I charge thee by thy generous love,
That fatal to my father thus may prove;
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.—
O soul of all my wishes! I replied,
Can that soft fabric stem Affliction’s tide?
Canst thou, bright pattern of exalted truth,
To sorrow doom the summer of thy youth,
And I, ingrateful! all that sweetness see
Consigned to lasting misery for me?
Sooner this moment may th’ 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:
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 }
Shall hail Palemon to his native shore, }
Where never interest shall divide us more.— }
“Her struggling soul, o’erwhelmed 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 cruel haste the shades of night withdrew,
And gave the signal of a sad adieu:
As on my neck th’ 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:
‘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-wished atonement of long-suffered pain,
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 embarked, 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;
In mutual hazards oft severely tried,
Nor hope, nor danger, could their love divide.
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:
Oh! warned, avoid the path that leads to woe,
Where thorns, and baneful weeds, alternate grow:
Let them severer stoic nymphs possess,
Whose stubborn passions feel no soft distress.
Now as the youths returning o’er the plain
Approached the lonely margin of the main,
First, with attention rouzed, 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!
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;
While yet the songsters of the vocal grove,
With dying numbers tune the soul to love:
With joyful eyes th’ attentive master sees
Th’ 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, yet enervate, rise;
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.—
Amid this fearful trance, a thundering sound
He hears, and thrice the hollow decks rebound;
Upstarting 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 canvass 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 th’ 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:
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, tall Ida’s height,
Tremendous rock! emerges on the sight;
North-east, a league, the isle of Standia bears,
And westward, Freschin’s woody cape appears.
In distant angles while the transient gales
Alternate blow, they trim the flagging sails;
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 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 Phœbus 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 th’ analogy is sought,
And on the sinical triangle wrought:
By this magnetic variance is explored,
Just angles known, and polar truth restored.
The natives, while the ship departs their land,
Ashore with admiration gazing stand.
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 their contrast next displayed,
All fore and aft in polished jet arrayed.
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.
Th’ imperial trident graced her dexter hand,
Of power to rule the surge like Moses’ wand;
Th’ 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.
Th’ 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
Th’ artillery frowned, a black tremendous tier!
Embalmed with orient gum, above the wave
The swelling sides a yellow radiance gave.
On the broad stern, a pencil warm and bold,
That never servile rules of art controll’d,
An allegoric tale on high pourtray’d;
There a young hero, here a royal maid:
Fair England’s genius in the youth exprest,
Her ancient foe, but now her friend confest,
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 th’ 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 rustic 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 defy’d,
The scourge of tyrants! glittered by his side:
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 gulphs 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
Th’ imperial flag that rules the watery world.
Deep blushing _Armors_ all the tops invest,
And warlike trophies either quarter drest:
Then towered the masts, the canvass 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 cleaved the watery plain,
The pride and wonder of th’ Ægean main.
END OF THE FIRST CANTO.
SECOND CANTO:
THE SCENE LIES AT SEA, BETWEEN CAPE FRESCHIN, IN CANDIA, AND THE ISLAND
OF FALCONERA, WHICH IS NEARLY TWELVE LEAGUES NORTHWARD OF CAPE SPADO.
TIME,—FROM NINE IN THE MORNING UNTIL ONE O’CLOCK OF THE NEXT DAY AT NOON.
ARGUMENT.
I. Reflections on leaving Shore.—II. Favourable
Breeze—Water-Spout—The dying 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 up; 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—Heavy 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—Mizen
reefed.—IV. A tremendous Sea bursts over the Deck; its
consequences—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 scud—The Fore Stay-sail hoisted and split—The Head Yards
braced aback—The Mizen-Mast cut away.
THE
SHIPWRECK.
CANTO II.
[Illustration:
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:
DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY EDWARD FINDEN. PUBLISHED BY
JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.]
CANTO II.
I. Adieu! 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, th’ Elysian vallies 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;
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 confin’d.
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:
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 th’ 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!
Th’ 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 th’ increasing breezes veer,
Dark clouds incumbent on their wings appear:
Ahead they see the consecrated grove
Of Cyprus, sacred once to Cretan Jove.
The ship beneath her lofty pressure reels,
And to the freshening gale still deeper heels.
But now, beneath the lofty vessel’s stern,
A shoal of sportive dolphins they discern
Beaming from burnished scales refulgent rays,
Till all the glowing ocean seems to blaze:
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 fatal victim through;
Th’ upturning points his ponderous 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 th’ astonished sight!
What glowing hues of mingled shade and light!
Not equal beauties gild the lucid west
With parting beams all o’er profusely drest,
Not lovelier colours paint the vernal dawn,
When orient dews impearl th’ 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!
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 th’ adjacent shore,
But by the oracle of truth below,
The wonderous 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,
Maleca 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:
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 canvass bends the masts on high,
Low in the wave the leeward cannon lie.
The master calls, to give the ship relief,
‘The topsails 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 topsails 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 the Atlantic regions shone;
Still blacker clouds, that all the skies invade,
Draw o’er his sullied orb a dismal shade;
A lowering squall obscures the southern sky,
Before whose sweeping breath the waters fly;
Its weight the top-sails can no more sustain—
‘Reef top-sails, reef!’ the master calls again.
The halyards and top bow-lines soon are gone,
The 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 past,
The reefs enrolled, and every point made fast.
Their task above thus finished, they descend,
And vigilant th’ 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 cataracts tumultuous blend.
Deep, on her side, the reeling vessel lies:
‘Brail up the mizen quick!’ the master cries,
‘Man the clue-garnets! let the main-sheet fly!’
It rends in thousand shivering shreds on high!
The main-sail all in streaming ruins tore,
Loud fluttering, imitates the thunder’s roar:
The ship still labours in th’ 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 th’ attentive timoneer applies:
As in pursuit along th’ aërial way
With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey.
Each motion watches of the doubtful chace,
Obliquely wheeling through the fluid 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 th’ augmenting gale—
The mizen draws; she springs aloof once more,
While the forestay-sail balances before.
The fore-sail braced obliquely to the wind,
They near the prow th’ extended tack confin’d;
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;
Th’ extending sheets on either side are mann’d,
Abroad they come! the fluttering sails expand;
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 pendant order placed.
The main-sail, by the squall so lately rent,
In streaming pendants flying, is unbent:
With brails 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 th’ unwilling tack,
And, while the lee clue-garnet’s lowered away,
Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay.
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:
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 th’ ethereal vault deface,
Their route to leeward still sagacious form,
To shun the fury of th’ approaching storm.
III. Fair Candia now no more beneath her lee
Protects the vessel from th’ insulting sea;
Round her broad arms impatient of control,
Roused from the secret deep, to billows roll:
Sunk were the bulwarks of the friendly shore,
And all the scene an hostile aspect wore.
The flattering wind, that late with promised aid
From Candia’s bay th’ unwilling ship betray’d,
No longer fawns beneath the fair disguise,
But like a ruffian on his quarry flies;
Tost 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:
E’en 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;
Auster’s resistless force all air invades,
And every rolling wave more ample spreads:
The ship no longer can her top-sails bear;
No hopes of milder weather now appear.
Bowlines and halyards are cast off again,
Clue-lines hauled down, and sheets let fly amain:
Embrailed each top-sail, and by braces squar’d,
The seamen climb aloft, and man each yard;
They furled the sails, and pointed to the wind
The yards, by rolling tackles then confin’d,
While o’er the ship the gallant boatswain flies;
Like a hoarse mastiff through the storm he cries,
Prompt to direct th’ unskilful still appears,
Th’ expert he praises, and the timid cheers.
Now some, to strike top-gallant yards attend, }
Some, trav’llers up the weather-back stays send, }
At each mast-head the top-ropes others bend: }
The parrels, lifts, 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 belay’d:
Their sails reduced, and all the rigging clear,
Awhile the crew relax from toils severe;
Awhile their spirits, with fatigue opprest,
In vain expect th’ alternate hour of rest—
But with redoubling force the tempests blow,
And watery hills in dread succession flow;
A dismal shade o’ercast the frowning skies,
New troubles grow; fresh 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:
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 drown’d.
The ship no longer can whole courses bear,
To reef them now becomes the master’s care;
The sailors, summoned aft, all ready stand,
And man th’ enfolding brails at his command:
But here the doubtful officers dispute,
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,
Who from the reigning cause foretels th’ 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 they now stand by,
The lee clue-garnet, and the bunt-lines ply;
Then, all prepared, ‘Let go the sheet!’ 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 canvass 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 mainsail they repair;
While some above the yard o’er-haul the tye,
Below, the down-haul tackle others ply;
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 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 extend;
The circling earings round th’ extremes entwin’d,
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 inrolled they lay,
Extend the worming lines, and ends belay.
Hadst thou, Arion! held the leeward post
While on the yard by mountain billows tost,
Perhaps Oblivion o’er our tragic tale
Had then for ever drawn her dusky veil;
But ruling Heaven prolonged thy vital date,
Severer ills to suffer, and relate.
For, while aloft the order those attend
To furl the mainsail, or on deck descend;
A sea, upsurging with stupendous roll,
To instant ruin seems to doom the whole:
‘O friends, secure your hold!’ Arion cries—
It comes all dreadful! down the vessel lies
Half buried sideways; while, beneath it tost,
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 extend,
Again in shivering streamers they may rend;
Or should they stand, beneath th’ oppressive strain
The down-pressed ship may never rise again;
Too late to weather now Morea’s land,
And drifting fast on Athens’ 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 mizen next agree,
And try beneath it sidelong in the sea.
Now down the mast the yard they lower away,
Then jears and topping-lift secure belay;
The head, with doubling canvass fenced around,
In balance near the lofty peak they bound:
The reef enwrapped, th’ inserting knittles tied,
The halyards throt and peak are next applied—
The order given, the yard aloft they swayed,
The brails relaxed, th’ 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;
Though round him perils grew in fell array,
And fates and furies stood to bar his way;
Not more adventurous was th’ attempt, to move
Th’ infernal powers with strains of heavenly love,
Than mine, in ornamental verse to dress
The harshest sounds that terms of art express:
Such arduous toil sage Dædalus 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 Phœbus’ daughters never aimed to stray,
The Muse, that tuned to barbarous sounds her string,
Now spreads, like Dædalus, 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;
No future ills unknown their souls appal,
They know no danger, or they scorn it all:
But e’en the generous spirits of the brave,
Subdued by toil, a friendly respite crave;
They, with severe fatigue alone opprest,
Would fain indulge an interval of rest.
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 th’ enormous stroke,
The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke;
Torn from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew,
And gripes and lashings all asunder flew;
Companion, binacle, in floating wreck,
With compasses and glasses strewed the deck;
The balanced mizen, 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, and, terrible to hear!
Five feet immersed along the line appear:
At either pump they ply the clanking brake,
And, turn by turn, th’ 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!
And following hosts the shattered domes invade:
Her inmates long repel the hostile flood,
And shield their sacred charge in streams of blood;
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 opprest by ponderous cannon groan;
Deep rolling from the watery volume’s height,
The tortur’d 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 th’ 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 th’ 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,
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 aërial 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 th’ 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,
Th’ envenom’d mantle from his side he tore;
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:
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 opprest,
Dismay and anguish every heart possest;
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 clattering pumps with 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 th’ 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;
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 th’ immediate line of drift, he found
The rugged isle, with rocks and breakers bound,
Of Falconera; 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 St. George, and rocky Gardalor.
With him the pilots, of their hopeless state,
In mournful consultation, long 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 concave spread,
Nor storied pillars raised aloft their head:
But here the queen of shade around them threw
Her dragon wing, disastrous to the view!
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—
Enclosed 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:
This morn with favouring gales the port we left,
Though now of every flattering hope bereft:
No skill, nor long experience could forecast
Th’ unseen approach of this destructive blast;
These seas, where storms at various seasons blow,
No reigning winds nor certain omens know:
The hour, th’ 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 surges’ 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;
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 counsels 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, th’ 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 th’ 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:
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 th’ 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:
For, while the vessel through unnumbered chinks,
Above, below, th’ 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!
Our sea-breach’d 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 th’ 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 th’ 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 long to Grecian coasts is yet the run:
Less harassed then, our scudding ship may bear
Th’ 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,
The hull dismasted there awhile 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 th’ events revolved,
And on their final refuge thus resolved—
When, like the faithful shepherd who beholds
Some prowling wolf approach his fleecy folds,
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 e’en 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 counsels followed, from a watery grave
Our crew perhaps amid the surf may save:—
“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,
Th’ 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 prepar’d,
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 stem, 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 laniard 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!
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 bloodhound train, by rapine’s lust impell’d,
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 bloodhounds all her circling shores disown;
Who, though by barb’rous tyranny opprest,
Can share affliction with the wretch distrest:
Their hearts, by cruel fate inured to grief,
Oft to the friendless stranger yield relief.”
With conscious horror struck, the naval band
Deserted for a while 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!
On thy supreme assistance we rely;
Thy mercy supplicate, if doomed to die!
Perhaps this storm is sent with healing breath
From neighb’ring 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 th’ invading foe,
Eludes their wiles and frustrates every blow,
Tries his last art the tottering state to save,
Or in its ruins find a glorious grave.
Still in the yawning trough the vessel reels,
Ingulphed beneath two fluctuating hills;
On either side they rise, tremendous scene!
A long dark melancholy vale between:
The balanced ship now forward, now behind, }
Still felt th’ impression of the waves and wind, }
And to the right and left by turns inclin’d; }
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-sails sheets to mid-ships were conveyed,
And round the foremast on each side belayed;
Thus ready, to the halyards they apply,
They hoist! away the flitting ruins fly:
Yet Albert new resources still prepares,
Conceals his grief, and doubles all his cares.—
“Away there! lower the mizen-yard on deck,”
He calls, “and brace the foremast yards aback!”
His great example every bosom fires,
New life enkindles, 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 mizen-mast away!”
He said: to cut the girding stay they run,
Soon on each side the severed shrouds are gone:
Fast by the fated pine bold Rodmond stands,
Th’ 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,
Th’ experienced artist from the blood betrays
The latent venom, or its course delays;
But if th’ infection triumphs o’er his art,
Tainting the vital stream that warms the heart,
To stop the course of death’s inflaming tides,
Th’ infected member from the trunk divides.
END OF THE SECOND CANTO.
THIRD CANTO.
THE SCENE IS EXTENDED FROM THAT PART OF THE ARCHIPELAGO WHICH LIES TEN
MILES TO THE NORTHWARD OF FALCONERA, TO CAPE COLONNA IN ATTICA.
THE TIME ABOUT SEVEN HOURS,—FROM ONE, UNTIL EIGHT IN THE MORNING.
ARGUMENT.
I. The beneficial influence of Poetry in the
civilization of Mankind—Diffidence of the Author.—II.
Wreck of the Mizen-mast cleared away—Ship put before
the Wind—Labours much—Different stations of the
Officers—Appearance of the Island of Falconera.—III.
Excursion to the adjacent Nations of Greece renowned in
Antiquity—Athens—Socrates—Plato—Aristides—Solon—Corinth—Its
Architecture—Sparta—Leonidas—Invasion by
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
Mycæne—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—A Tempest, accompanied with Rain,
Hail, and Meteors—Darkness of the Night, Lightning and
Thunder—Day-break—St. George’s Cliffs open upon them—The Ship,
in great danger, passes the Island of St. George.—V. Land of
Athens appears—Helmsman struck blind by Lightning—Ship laid
broadside to the Shore—Bowsprit, Foremast, and Main Top-mast
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.
THE
SHIPWRECK.
CANTO III.
[Illustration:
Hadst thou, soft Maiden! in this hour of woe
Beheld him writhing from the deadly blow,
What force of art, what language could express
Thine agony, thine exquisite distress?
DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY F. ENGLEHEART. PUBLISHED BY
JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.]
CANTO III.
I. When in a barbarous age, with blood defil’d,
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 controul,
To melt in tender sympathy the soul;
The heart’s remote recesses to explore,
And touch its springs when prose availed no more:
The kindling spirit caught th’ 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 Mæonides, 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 befel,
The strains meand’ring 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 Mæonian lyre
Awakes the numbers fraught with living fire;
Full oft indeed that mournful harp of yore
Wept the sad wanderer lost upon the shore;
’Tis true he lightly sketched the bold design,
But toils more joyless, more severe are mine;
Since o’er that scene his genius swiftly ran,
Subservient only to a nobler plan:
But I, perplexed in labyrinths of art,
Anatomize, and blazon every part;
Attempt with plaintive numbers to display,
And chain th’ events in regular array;
Though hard the task to sing in varied strains,
When still unchanged the same sad theme remains;
O could it draw compassion’s melting tear
For kindred miseries, oft beheld too near!
For kindred wretches, oft in ruin cast
On Albion’s strand beneath the wintery blast;
For all the pangs, the complicated woe,
Her bravest sons, her guardian sailors know;
Then every breast should sigh at our distress—
This were the summit of my hoped success!
For this, my theme through mazes I pursue,
Which nor Mæonides, nor Maro knew.
II. Awhile the mast, in ruins dragged behind,
Balanced th’ 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 th’ enlarging wind it falls,
“Square fore and aft the yards,” the master calls:
“You timoneers her motion still attend,
For on your steerage all our lives depend:
So, steady! meet her! watch the curving prow,
And from the gale directly let her go.”
“Starboard again!” the watchful pilot cries,
“Starboard!” th’ obedient timoneer replies:
Then back to port, 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 slumb’ring 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 pursuing 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:
Now quivering o’er the topmost wave she rides,
While deep beneath th’ enormous gulf divides;
Now launching headlong down the horrid vale,
Becalmed, she hears no more the howling 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 th’ infernal air he cleaved;
There, in some hideous gulf descending prone,
Far in the void abrupt of night was known—
E’en so she climbs the briny mountain’s height,
Then down the black abyss precipitates her flight:
The masts, about whose tops the whirlwinds sing,
With long vibration round her axle swing.
To guide her 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 what cruisers wander o’er the deeps:
Where’er he moves Palemon still attends,
As if on him his only hope depends;
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—
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 th’ Atlantic Ocean, when we find
Some alp of ice driv’n southward by the wind,
The sultry air all sickening pants around,
In deluges of torrid ether drown’d;
Till when the floating isle approaches nigh,
In cooling tides th’ aërial 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;
Th’ 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 scudding ship surround?
Regions of old through all the world renown’d;
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 along each famous shore? }
They did: for in this desert, joyless soil,
No flowers of genial science deign to smile;
Sad ocean’s genius, in untimely hour,
Withers the bloom of every springing flower;
For native tempests here with blasting breath,
Despoil, and doom the vernal buds to death;
Here fancy droops, while sullen clouds, and storm,
The generous temper of the soul deform:
Then, if among the wandering naval train,
One stripling, exiled from th’ 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;
In vain might Phœbus’ ray his mind inspire,
Since Fate with torrents quenched the kindling fire:
If one this pain of living death possess’d,
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 god-like 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;
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,
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 admiration viewed:
Her name, for architecture long renown’d,
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 Lacedæmon’s glory fell;
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 all shuddered as the chief drew near;
He, at Thermopylæ’s decisive plain,
Their force opposed with Sparta’s glorious train;
Tall Oeta saw the tyrant’s conquered bands
In gasping millions bleed on hostile lands:
Thus vanquished, haughty Asia heard thy name,
And Thebes, and Athens, sickened at thy fame;
Thy state, supported by Lycurgus’ laws,
Gained, like thine arms, superlative applause;
E’en 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 its name disgrace.
Not distant far, Arcadia’s blest 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 blest,
While transport glowed in each enamoured breast,
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 th’ uncultured plain.
Westward of these, beyond the Isthmus, lies
The long sought Isle of Ithacus the wise;
Where fair Penelope, of him deprived,
To guard her honour endless schemes contrived:
She, only shielded by her stripling son,
Her lord Ulysses long to Ilion gone,
Each bold attempt of suitor-kings repell’d,
And undefiled her nuptial contract held;
True to her vows, and resolutely chaste,
Met arts with art, and 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 th’ Ægean main to Dardan coasts:
Unhappy prince! who, on a hostile shore,
Fatigue, and danger, ten long winters bore;
And when to native realms restored at last
To reap the harvest of thy labours past,
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 Macronisi is adjacent 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;
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 th’ immortal shore
That sacred Phœbus, and Diana bore,
Delos! through all th’ Ægean seas renown’d,
Whose coast the rocky Cyclades surround;
By Phœbus honoured, and by Greece revered,
Her hallowed groves e’en distant Persia feared:
But now a desert unfrequented land,
No human footstep marks the trackless sand.
Thence to the north by Asia’s western bound
Fair Lemnos stands, with rising marble crown’d;
Where, in her rage, avenging Juno hurl’d
Ill-fated Vulcan from th’ ethereal world:
There his eternal anvils first he reared;
Then, forged by Cyclopean art, appeared
Thunders that shook the skies with dire alarms,
And formed by skill divine, immortal arms;
There, with this crippled wretch, the foul disgrace
And living scandal of th’ empyreal race,
In wedlock lived the beauteous Queen of Love;
Can such sensations heavenly bosoms move!
Eastward of this appears the Dardan shore,
That once th’ 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:
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.
Nor 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 from Asia’s shore:
Till in a fated hour, on Thracia’s coast,
She saw her lover’s lifeless body tost;
Then felt her bosom agony severe,
Her eyes, sad gazing, poured th’ incessant tear;
O’erwhelmed with anguish, frantic with despair,
She beat her swelling breast, and tore her hair;
On dear Leander’s name in vain she cried,
Then headlong plunged into the parting tide:
Th’ exulting tide received the lovely maid,
And proudly from the strand its freight convey’d.
Far west of Thrace, beyond th’ Ægean main,
Remote from ocean lies the Delphic plain:
The sacred oracle of Phœbus there
High o’er the mount arose, divinely fair!
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 Æsculapius’ snake displayed his crest,
And burning glories sparkled on his breast;
While from his eye’s 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,
Renowned Parnassus lifts its honoured head;
There roses blossom in eternal spring,
And strains celestial feathered warblers sing:
Apollo, here, bestows th’ 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 harps divine,
Or bid the Paphian lute mellifluous play,
And tune to plaintive love the liquid lay;
Their numbers every mental storm controul,
And lull to harmony th’ 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:
Hence 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 flow’ry vales, and fragrant scenes,
Delightful bowers, and ever vernal greens!
Adieu, ye streams! that o’er enchanted ground
In lucid maze th’ Aonian hill surround;
Ye fairy scenes! where fancy loves to dwell,
And young delight, for ever, oh! farewell!
The soul with tender luxury you fill,
And o’er the sense Lethean dews distil—
Awake, O Memory! from th’ 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 th’ 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—
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
Th’ impelling floods, that lash her to the shore:
High o’er the poop th’ audacious seas aspire,
Uprolled in hills of fluctuating fire;
With lab’ring 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 wintery 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;
Th’ ethereal dome in mournful pomp array’d
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 combin’d,
And here, to one ill-fated ship opposed,
At once the dreadful magazine disclosed:
And lo! tremendous o’er the deep he springs,
Th’ 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 burst in dazzling sheets the living flame,
And dread concussion rends th’ 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;
E’en now my ear with quick vibration feels
Th’ explosion burst in strong rebounding peals;
Swift through my pulses glides the kindling fire,
As lightning glances on th’ 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—
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 Æneas 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 thy 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.
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 mountained 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 Æneas’ eyes
The Straits of Sicily were seen to rise,
When Palinurus from the helm descry’d,
The Rocks of Scylla on his eastern side,
While in the west, with hideous yawn disclosed,
His onward path Charybdis’ gulph opposed;
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 thro’ 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 her length in distance 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 past:
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 confin’d,
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,
While, all forlorn, the victim pines in vain
For scenes he never shall possess again.
V. But now Athenian mountains they descry,
And o’er the surge Colonna frowns on high:
Where marble columns, long by time defaced,
Moss-covered on the lofty cape are placed;
There reared by fair devotion to sustain
Tn elder times Tritonia’s sacred fane;
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 their 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 th’ 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 th’ 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 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:
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 prest 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 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;
Transfixt with terror at th’ approaching doom,
Self pity in their breasts alone has room:
Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon, near
With young Arion, on the mast appear;
E’en they, amid th’ 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 horrors of the main
They viewed th’ 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,
That sees remote the mansions of the blest.
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!
O yet confirm my heart, ye powers above!
This last tremendous shock of fate to prove;
The tottering frame of reason yet sustain,
Nor let this total havoc whirl my brain:
Since I, all trembling in extreme distress,
Must still the horrible result express.
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:
Immortal Zeno’s self would trembling see
Inexorable fate beneath the lee;
And Epictetus at the sight, in vain
Attempt his stoic firmness to retain;
Had Socrates, for godlike virtue famed,
And wisest of the sons of men proclaimed,
Spectator of such various horrors been,
E’en he had staggered at this dreadful scene.
In vain the cords and axes were prepar’d,
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 mounting 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,
Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore
Th’ impervious horrors of a leeward shore.
As o’er the surf the bending mainmast hung,
Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung:
Some on a broken crag were struggling cast,
And there by oozy tangles grappled fast;
Awhile they bore th’ o’erwhelming billows’ rage,
Unequal combat with their fate to wage;
Till all benumed, 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 th’ 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 prest the stony beach a lifeless crew!
Next, O unhappy chief! th’ 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 doom’d to mourn
For him, alas! who never shall return,
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 resign’d;
And, as the tumbling waters o’er him roll’d,
His outstretched arms the master’s legs enfold:
Sad Albert feels their 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—
The gushing streams roll back th’ 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 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 tost
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 th’ 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 their 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,
Again the dismal prospect opens round,
The wreck, the shore, the dying, and the drown’d!
And see! enfeebled by repeated shocks,
Those two, who scramble on th’ 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 th’ 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:
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,
Th’ unhappy sufferers to assist, and guide.
Meanwhile, those three escaped, beneath explore
The first advent’rous 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 array’d
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;
Th’ 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,
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 equal pangs opprest,
In faltering accents thus his friend addrest:
“O rescued from destruction late so nigh,
Beneath whose fatal influence doomed I lie;
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 controul
The noblest passions that inspire the soul.
But, O Thou sacred Power! whose law connects
Th’ 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, th’ unwilling messenger of Fate,
To him the tragic story first relate;
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!
But, oh! to lovely Anna shouldst thou tell
What dire untimely end thy friend befel;
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 wreck;
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 choaks 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 prevail no more.
“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 th’ afflicted bosom they o’erflow,
While Memory dictates, this sad Shipwreck tell,
And what distress thy wretched friend befel:
Then, while in streams of soft compassion drown’d,
The swains lament, and maidens weep around;
While lisping children, touched with infant fear,
With wonder gaze, and drop th’ 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;
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.
THE
SHIPWRECK.
ELEGY.
[Illustration:
From young Arion first the news received
With terror pale unhappy Anna read,
With inconsolable distress she grieved.
And from her cheek the rose of beauty fled.
DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL, R.A. ENGRAVED BY F. ENGLEHEART. PUBLISHED BY
JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 1, 1819.]
OCCASIONAL ELEGY, IN WHICH THE PRECEDING NARRATIVE IS CONCLUDED.
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’erwhelm’d 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 th’ 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:
From young Arion first the news received
With terror pale, unhappy Anna read;
With inconsolable distress she grieved,
And from her cheek the rose of beauty fled.
In vain, alas! the gentle virgin wept,
Corrosive anguish nipt her vital bloom;
O’er her soft frame diseases sternly crept,
And gave the lovely victim to the tomb:
A longer date of woe, the widowed Wife
Her lamentable lot afflicted bore;
Yet both were rescued from the chains of life
Before Arion reached his native shore!
The Father, unrelenting phrenzy stung,
Untaught in Virtue’s school distress to bear;
Severe remorse his tortured bosom wrung,
He languished, groaned, and perished 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;
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 toll;
Nor weeping friends attend your sable bier,
Who sadly listen to the passing bell;
The tutor’d 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,—
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.
NOTES.
PAGE 17, l. 14.
_A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast!_
“Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains,
In cradle of the rude imperious surge.”
SHAKSPEARE.
PAGE 30, l. 1.
_O’er bar and shelf._
A _bar_ is known, in hydrography, to be a mass of earth, or sand, that
has been collected by the surge of the sea, at the entrance of a river,
or haven, so as to render navigation difficult, and often dangerous. A
_shelf_, or _shelve_, so called from the Saxon _Schylf_, is a name given
to any dangerous shallows, sand-banks, or rocks, lying immediately under
the surface of the water.
PAGE 37, l. 19.
_And lo! the shore, with mournful prospects crown’d._
Alluding to the ever memorable siege of Candia, in 1669.
PAGE 52, l. 10.
The _windlass_ is a large cylindrical piece of timber used in merchant
ships to heave up the anchors: it is furnished with strong iron _pauls_
to prevent it from turning back by the efforts of the cable, when charged
with the weight of the anchor, or strained by the violent jerking of
the ship in a tempestuous sea. As the _windlass_ is heaved about in a
vertical direction, it is evident that the effort of an equal number of
men acting upon it will be much more powerful than on the _capstan_. It
requires, however, some dexterity and address to manage the handspec, or
lever, to the greatest advantage; and to perform this the sailors must
all rise at once upon the _windlass_, and, fixing their bars therein,
give a sudden jerk at the same instant; in which movement they are
regulated by a sort of song pronounced by one of the number. The most
dexterous managers of the _handspec_, in heaving at the _windlass_, are
generally supposed to be the colliers of Northumberland; and of all
European mariners, the Dutch are certainly the most awkward and sluggish
in this manœuvre.
PAGE 53, l. 14.
_The stately ship they tow._
From the Saxon _teohan_. Towing is chiefly used, as in the present
instance, when a ship for want of wind is forced toward the shore by the
swell of the sea.
PAGE 53, l. 19, 20.
_Now swelling stud-sails on each side extend,_
_Then stay-sails sidelong to the breeze ascend._
1. _Stud_, or _studding-sails_, called by the French _Banettes en etui_,
are light sails, which are extended in moderate breezes beyond the skirts
of the principal sails: where they appear as wings upon the yard-arms.
2. _Stay-sail_; though the form of sails is so extremely different, they
may all be divided into sails which have either _three_ or _four_ sides:
a _stay-sail_ comes under the first class, and receives its name from
a large strong rope on which it is hoisted, called a stay, employed to
support the mast, by being extended from its upper end towards the fore
part of the ship, as the shrouds (a range of large ropes), are extended
to the right and left of the mast, and behind it. The yards of a ship are
said to be square, when they hang across the ship, at right angles, with
the mast; and _braced_, when they form greater or lesser angles with the
ship’s length.
PAGE 54, l. 3.
_The pilots now their Azimuth attend._
The magnetical _Azimuth_, a term which astronomers have borrowed from
the Arabians, is the apparent distance of the sun from the north or
south point of the compass; and this is discovered, by observing with an
azimuth compass, when the sun is ten or fifteen degrees above the horizon.
PAGE 54, l. 22.
_White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon._
Before the art of coppering ships’ bottoms was discovered, they were
painted white. The _wales_ are the strong flanks which extend along a
ship’s side, at different heights, throughout her whole length, and form
the curves by which a vessel appears light and graceful on the water:
they are usually distinguished into the main-wale, and the channel-wale.
PAGE 58, l. 7.
_Deep-blushing armors all the tops invest._
In our largest merchantmen, the _tops_, or platforms, which surround the
heads of the _lower_ mast, (for every ship’s mast, taken in its apparent
length, consists of the _lower_ mast, the _top_-mast, and _top-gallant_
mast) are fenced on the aft, or hinder side, by a rail of about three
feet high, stretching across, supported by stanchions; between which
a netting is usually constructed, the outside of which was formerly
covered with red baize, or canvass painted red, and was called the _top
armor_; being a sort of blind against the enemy for the men who were
there stationed. This name is now nearly lost, and the netting is always
covered with black canvass.
NOTES ON THE SECOND CANTO.
PAGE 66, l. 20.
_And the dark scud in swift succession flies._
The scud is a name given by seamen to the lowest and lightest clouds,
which are swiftly driven along the atmosphere by the winds.
PAGE 66, l. 22.
_Low in the wave the leeward cannon lie._
When the wind crosses a ship’s course, either directly or obliquely, that
side of the ship upon which it acts is termed the _weather_ side; and the
opposite one, which is then pressed downwards, is termed the _lee_ side;
all on one side of her is accordingly called to windward, and all on the
opposite side to leeward: hence also are derived the _lee_ cannon, the
_lee_ braces, _weather_ braces, &c.
PAGE 66, l. 24; and PAGE 67, l. 2.
_Topsails, reef, blocks._
_Topsails_ are large square sails, of the second magnitude and height;
as the _courses_ are of the first magnitude, and the lowest.—_Reefs_
are certain divisions of the sail, which are taken in or let out in
proportion to the increase or diminution of the wind. _Blocks_ are what
landsmen would rather term, from the French word, (_poulie_) _pullies_.
PAGE 67, l. 15, 16, 19.
_Halyards—bow-lines—clue-lines—reef tackles—earings._
_Halyards_ are those ropes by which sails are hoisted or lowered.
_Bow-lines_ are ropes fastened to the outer edge of square sails in
three different places, that the windward edge of the sail may be bound
tight forward on a side wind, in order to keep the sail from shivering.
_Clue-lines_ are fastened to the lower corners of the square sails, for
the more easy furling of them. _Reef-tackles_ are ropes fastened to the
edge of the sail, just beneath the lowest reef; and being brought down
to the deck by means of two blocks, are used to facilitate the operation
of reefing. _Earings_ are small ropes employed to fasten the upper
corners of the principal sails, and the extremities of the reefs, to the
respective yard-arms, particularly when any sail is to be close furled.
PAGE 68, l. 6.
_Brail up the mizen quick._
The _mizen_ is a large sail bent to the mizen mast, and is commonly
reckoned one of the courses, which consist of the _main-sail_,
_fore-sail_, and _mizen_. As the word _brails_ is a general name given to
all the ropes which are employed to haul up the bottoms, lower corners,
and skirts of the great sails; so the drawing them together, for the more
ready operation of furling, is called brailing them up. The effect which
the operation of brailing up the mizen produces, is noticed in the last
note of this Canto.
PAGE 68, l. 7.
_Man the clue-garnets, let the main-sheet fly!_
_Clue-garnets_ are the same to the main-sail and fore-sail, which the
clue-lines are to all other square-sails, and are hauled up when the sail
is to be furled or _brailed_. _Sheets_: it is necessary in this place to
remark, that the sheets, which are universally mistaken by our English
poets for the sails, are in reality the ropes that are used to extend the
clues, or lower corners of the sails, to which they are attached.
PAGE 68, l. 13.
_Bear up the helm a-weather!_
The reason for putting the helm a-weather, or to the side next the wind,
is to make the ship veer before it when it blows so hard that she cannot
bear her side to it any longer. _Veering_, or wearing, is the operation
by which a ship, in changing her course from one _board_ to the other,
turns her stern to windward; the French term is, _virer vent arriere_.
PAGE 68, l. 20.
_Timoneer_—
The _helmsman_, from the French, _timonnier_.
PAGE 69, l. 8.
_While the fore stay-sail balances before:_
Called with more propriety the _fore top-mast stay-sail_: it is of
a triangular shape, and runs upon the fore top-mast stay, over the
bowsprit: it consequently has an influence on the fore-part of the ship,
as the mizen has on the hinder part; and, when thus used together, they
may be said to balance each other. See also the last note of this Canto.
PAGE 69, l. 10.
... _th’ extended tack confin’d._
The main-sail and fore-sail of a ship are furnished with a _tack_ on each
side, which is formed of a thick rope tapering to the end, having a knot
wrought upon the largest extremity, by which it is firmly retained in the
clue of the sail: by this means the tack is always fastened to windward,
at the same time that the sheet extends the sail to leeward.
PAGE 69, l. 13.
... _the bunt-lines gone!_
_Bunt-lines_ are ropes fastened to the bottoms of the square sails to
draw them up to the yards, when the sails are brailed or furled.
PAGE 69, l. 19.
... _and yards to starboard braced._
A yard is said to be braced, when it is turned about the mast
horizontally, either to the right or left: the ropes employed in this
service are called the larboard and starboard braces.
PAGE 69, l. 23, 24; and PAGE 70, l. 1, 2.
_Brails, head-ropes, robands._
_Brails_: a general name given to all the ropes which are employed to
haul up, or brail the bottoms, and lower corners of the great sails.
A rope is always attached to the edges of the sails, to strengthen
and prevent them from rending: those parts of it which are on the
perpendicular or sloping edges, are called _leech ropes_, that, at
the bottom, the _foot rope_, and that on the top, or upper edge, the
_head-rope. Robands_, or _rope bands_, are small pieces of rope, of a
sufficient length to pass two or three times about the yards, in order to
fix to them the upper edges of the respective great sails: the robands
for this purpose are passed through the eyelet holes under the head-rope.
PAGE 70, l. 3-6.
_That task performed, they first the braces slack,_
_Then to the chess-tree drag th’ unwilling tack._
_And, while the lee clue-garnet’s lower’d away,_
_Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay._
The braces are here slackened, because the lee-brace confining the yard,
the tack could not come down until the braces were cast off. The _chess
tree_, called by the French _taquet d’amure_, consists of a perpendicular
piece of wood, fastened with iron bolts, on each side the ship: in the
upper part of the chess-tree is a large hole, through which the tack is
passed; and when the _clue_ or lower corner of the sail comes down to it,
the tack is said to _be aboard_. _Taught_, the _roide_ of the French, and
_dicht_ of the Dutch sailors, implies the state of being extended, or
stretched out. _Tally_, is a word applied to the operation of hauling the
sheets aft, or toward the ship’s stern. To _belay_ is to fasten.
PAGE 71, l. 21, 22.
_They furled the sails, and pointed to the wind_
_The yards, by rolling tackles then confined._
The rolling tackle is an assemblage of blocks or pullies, through which
a rope is passed, until it becomes four-fold, in order to confine the
yard close down to leeward when the sail is furled, that the yard may not
gall the mast, from the rolling of the ship. _Gaskets_ are platted ropes
to wrap round the sails when furled.
PAGE 72, l. 3-8.
_Top-gallant-yards, travellers, back-stays, top-ropes, parrels, lifts,
topped, booms._
_Top-gallant-yards_, which are the highest ones in a ship, are sent down
at the approach of an heavy gale, to ease the mast-heads. _Travellers_
are iron rings furnished with a piece of rope, one end of which encircles
the ring to which it is spliced: they are principally intended to
facilitate the hoisting or lowering of the top-gallant yards; for which
purpose two of them are fixed on each back-stay; which are long ropes
that reach on each side of the ship, from the top-masts (which are the
second in point of height) to the chains. _Top-ropes_ are employed to
sway up or lower the top-masts, top-gallant-masts, and their respective
yards. _Parrels_ are those bands of rope, by which the yards are fastened
to the masts, so as to slide up and down when requisite; and of these
there are four different sorts. _Lifts_ are ropes which reach from each
mast-head to their respective yard-arms. A yard is said to be _topped_,
when one end of the yard is raised higher than the other, in order to
lower it on deck by means of the top-ropes. _Booms_ are spare masts, or
yards, which are placed in store on deck, between the main and foremast,
immediately to supply the place of any that may be carried away, or
injured, by stress of weather.
PAGE 73, l. 11.
_But here the doubtful officers dispute_—
This is particularly mentioned, not because there was, or could be, any
dispute at such a time between a master of a ship, and his chief mate, as
the former can always command the latter; but to expose the obstinacy of
a number of our veteran officers, who would rather risk any thing than
forego their ancient rules, although many of them are in the highest
degree equally absurd and dangerous. It is to the wonderful sagacity of
these philosophers, that we owe the sea maxims of avoiding to whistle in
a storm, because it will increase the wind; of whistling on the wind in a
calm; of nailing horse-shoes on the mast to prevent the power of witches;
of nailing a fair wind to the starboard cat-head, &c.
PAGE 74, l. 5.
_The tack’s eased off!_
It has been already remarked, that the _tack_ is always fastened to
windward; consequently, as soon as it is cast loose, and the clue-garnet
is hauled up, the weather clue of the sail immediately mounts to the
yard; and this operation must be carefully performed in a storm, to
prevent the sail from splitting, or being torn to pieces by shivering.
PAGE 74, l. 7.
_The sheet and weather-brace they now stand by._
To _stand by_ any rope is, in the language of seamen, to take hold of it.
Whenever the sheet is cast off, it is necessary to pull in the weather
brace, to prevent the violent shaking of the sail.
PAGE 74, l. 13.
_By spilling lines embraced_—
The _spilling lines_, which are only used on particular occasions in
tempestuous weather, are employed to draw together, and confine the belly
of the sail, when inflated by the wind over the yard.
PAGE 74, l. 18.
_Below, the down-haul tackle others ply;_
The violence of the gale forcing the yard much out, it could not easily
have been lowered so as to reef the sail, without the application of a
tackle, consisting of an assemblage of the pullies, to haul it down on
the mast: this is afterwards converted into rolling tackle, which has
been already described in a former note.
PAGE 74, l. 19.
_Jears, lifts, and brails, a seaman each attends,_
_And down the mast its mighty yard descends._
_Jears_, or _geers_, answer the same purpose to the main-sail, fore-sail,
and mizen, as _haliards_ do to all inferior sails. The _tye_, a sort of
runner, or thick rope, is the upper part of the _jears_.
PAGE 74, l. 23, 24; and Page 75, l. 1-12.
_Reef-lines, shrouds, reef-band, outer and inner turns._
_Reef-lines_, are only used to reef the main-sail and fore-sail.
_Shrouds_, so called from the Saxon _scrud_, consist of a range of thick
ropes stretching downwards from the mast heads, to the right and left
sides of a ship, in order to support the masts, and enable them to carry
sail; they are also used as rope ladders, by which seamen ascend or
descend to execute whatever is wanting to be done about the sails and
rigging. _Reef-band_, consists of a piece of canvass sewed across the
sail, to strengthen it in the place where the eyelet-holes of the reefs
are formed. The _outer turns_ of the earing serve to extend the sail
along its yard; the _inner turns_ are employed to confine its head-rope
close to its surface.
PAGE 75, l. 21.
_A Sea, up-surging with stupendous roll._
A sea is the general term given by sailors to an enormous wave; and
hence, when such a wave bursts over the deck, the vessel is said to have
_shipped a sea_.
PAGE 77, l. 3, 4.
_Too late to weather now Morea’s land,_
_And drifting fast on Athen’s rocky strand._
To weather a shore is to pass to windward of it, which at this time
was prevented by the violence of the gale. _Drift_ is that motion and
direction, by which a vessel is forced to leeward sideways, when she is
unable any longer to carry sail; or, at least, is restrained to such a
portion of sail, as may be necessary to keep her sufficiently inclined to
one side, that she may not be dismasted by her violent labouring produced
by the turbulence of the sea.
PAGE 77, l. 10.
_And try beneath it the sidelong in the sea._
To _try_, is to lay the ship with her side nearly in the direction of the
wind and sea, with her head somewhat inclined to windward; the helm being
fastened close to the lee-side, or in the sea language, _hard a-lee_, to
retain her in that position. See a further illustration in the last note
of this Canto.
PAGE 77, l. 12.
_Topping lift, knittle, throt._
A tackle, or assemblage of pullies, which tops the upper end of the
mizen-yard. This line, and the six following, describe the operation of
reefing and balancing the mizen. The _knittle_ is a short line used to
reef the sails by the bottom. The _throt_ is that part of the mizen-yard
which is close to the mast.
PAGE 80, l. 13.
_Companion, binacle._
The _companion_ is a wooden porch placed over the ladder that leads down
to the cabins of the officers. The _binacle_ is a case, which is placed
on deck before the helm, containing three divisions; the middle one for
a lamp, or candle, and the two others for mariners’ compasses. There are
always two binacles on the deck of a ship of war, one of which is placed
before the master, at his appointed station. In all the old sea books it
was called _bittacle_.
PAGE 80, l. 19.
_They sound the well._
The _well_ is an apartment in a ship’s hold, serving to inclose the
pumps: it is sounded by dropping down a measured iron rod, which is
connected with a long line—The _brake_ is the pump-handle.
PAGE 83, l. 3.
_Meanwhile Arion traversing the waist._
The _waist_ is that part of a ship which is contained between the quarter
deck and forecastle; or the middle of that deck which is immediately
below them. When the waist of a merchant ship is only one or two steps in
descent from the quarter deck and forecastle, she is said to be galley
built; but when it is considerably deeper, as with six or seven steps,
she is then called frigate built.
PAGE 85, l. 13.
_Her place discovered by the rules of art._
The lee-way, or drift, in this passage are synonymous terms.—The true
course and distance resulting from these traverses is discovered by
collecting the difference of latitude, and departure of each course; and
reducing the whole into one departure, and one difference of latitude,
according to the known rules of trigonometry: this reduction will
immediately ascertain the base and perpendicular; or, in other words,
will give the difference of latitude and departure, to discover the
course and distance.
PAGE 89, l. 42.
_Yet where with safety can we dare to scud_
_Before this tempest and pursuing flood?_
The movement of _scudding_, from the Swedish word _skutta_, is never
attempted in a contrary wind, unless, as in the present instance, the
condition of a ship renders her incapable of sustaining any longer on
her side, the mutual efforts of the winds and waves. The principal
hazards, incident to scudding, are generally a _pooping_ sea; the
difficulty of steering, which exposes the vessel perpetually to the risk
of broaching-to; and the want of sufficient sea-room: a sea striking
the ship violently on the stern may dash it inwards, by which she must
inevitably founder; in broaching-to suddenly, she is threatened with
being immediately overset; and, for want of sea-room, she is endangered
with shipwreck on a lee-shore; a circumstance too dreadful to require
explanation.
PAGE 91, l. 9.
_Thus water-logged_—
A ship is said to be _water-logged_, when, having received through her
leaks a great quantity of water into her hold, she has become so heavy
and inactive on the sea, as to yield without resistance to the efforts
of every wave that rushes over the deck. As in this dangerous situation
the centre of gravity is no longer fixed, but fluctuates from place to
place, the stability of the ship is utterly lost: she is therefore almost
totally deprived of the use of her sails, which operate to overset her,
or press the head under water: hence there is no resource for the crew,
except to free her by the pumps, or to abandon her for the boats as soon
as possible.
PAGE 96, l. 3, 4.
_Hatches, lanyard._
_Hatches_, a term which seamen sometimes incorrectly use for _gratings_;
a sort of open cover for the hatchways, formed by several small laths,
or battens, which cross each other at right angles, leaving a square
interval between: these gratings are not only of service to admit the air
and light between decks, but also to let off the smoke of the great guns
during action.
_Lanyard_, or laniard, is a short piece of line fastened to different
things on board a ship, to preserve them in a particular place; such are
the lanyards of the gun-ports, the lanyard of the buoy, the lanyard of
the cat-hook, &c.; but the lanyards alluded to in the above line, were
those by means of which the shrouds were extended; or, as a sailor would
express himself, _taught_.
PAGE 99, l. 5.
_Both stay-sail sheets to mid-ships were conveyed._
The fore stay-sail being one of the sails which command the fore part of
the ship, is for that reason hoisted at this time, to bear her fore-part
round before the wind: for the same reason, after it is split, the
foremast yards are braced aback; that is, so as to form right angles with
the direction of the wind. For a further illustration of this, see the
subsequent note.
PAGE 99, l. 18.
_And hew at once the mizen-mast away!_
“When a ship is forced by the violence of a contrary wind to furl all
her sails, if the storm increases, and the sea continue to rise, she is
often strained to so great a degree, that, to ease her, she must be made
to run before their mutual direction; which, however, is rarely done but
in cases of the last necessity: now, as she has no head-way, the helm is
deprived of its governing power, as the latter effect is only produced in
consequence of the former: it therefore necessarily requires an uncommon
effort to wheel, or turn her, into any different position. It is an axiom
in natural philosophy, that ‘Every body will persevere in its state of
rest, or moving uniformly in a right line, unless it be compelled to
change its state by forces impressed; and that the change of motion is
proportional to the moving force impressed, and is made according to the
right line in which that force acts.’
“By this principle it is easy to conceive how a ship is compelled to
turn into any direction, by the force of the wind acting upon her sails
in lines parallel to the plane of the horizon: for the sails may be so
set, as to receive the current of air either directly, or more or less
obliquely; and the motion communicated to the ship must of necessity
conspire with that of the wind. As therefore the ship lies in such a
situation as to have the wind and sea directly on her side; and these
increase to such an height, that she must either founder, or scud before
the storm; the aftmost sails are first taken in, or so placed that the
wind has very little power on them: and the head-sails, or fore-mast
sails, are spread abroad, so that the whole force of the wind is exerted
on the ship’s forepart, which must therefore of necessity yield to its
impulse. The prow being thus put in motion, its motion must conspire
with that of the wind, and will be pushed about so as to run immediately
before it; for this reason, when no more sail can be carried, the
fore-mast yards are braced aback; that is, in such a position as to
receive all the current of air they can contain directly to perform the
operation of head-sails; and the mizen-yard is lowered to produce the
same effect as furling, or placing obliquely the aftmost sails; and this
attempt being found insufficient, the mizen-mast is cut away, which must
have been followed by the main-mast, if the expected effect had not taken
place.”
NOTES ON THE THIRD CANTO.
PAGE 106, l. 3, 4.
_While round before th’ enlarging wind it falls,_
_‘Square fore and aft the yards,’ the master calls._
The wind is said to _enlarge_, when it veers from the side towards the
stern. To square the yards is, in this place, to haul them directly
across the ship’s length.
PAGE 106, l. 7.
_So, steady! meet her!_
Steady! is an order to steer the ship according to the line on which she
then advances, without deviating to the right or left.
PAGE 106, l. 11.
_Then back to port_—
The left side of a ship is called _port_ in steering, that the helmsmen
may not mistake larboard for starboard. In all large ships, the tiller,
(or long bar of timber, that is fixed horizontally to the upper end of
the rudder), is guided by a _wheel_, which acts upon it with the powers
of a crane or windlass.
PAGE 108, l. 3.
_Poop, bow._
_Poop_, from the Latin word _puppis_, is the hindmost and highest deck
of a ship. The _bow_ is the rounding part of a ship’s side forward,
beginning at the place where the planks arch inwards, and terminating
where they close at the stem or prow.
PAGE 108, l. 19.
... _when past the beam it flies._
On the _beam_, implies any distance from the ship on a line with the
beams, or at right angles with the keel: thus, if the ship steers
northward, any object lying east, or west, is said to be on her starboard
or larboard beam.
PAGE 123, l. 20.
... _still they dread her broaching-to._
The great difficulty of steering the ship at this time before the wind,
is occasioned by its striking her on the quarter, when she makes the
least angle on either side; which often forces her stern round, and
brings her broadside to the wind and sea: this is an effect of the same
cause which is explained in the last note of the second Canto.
PAGE 127, l. 18, 19.
... _the faithful stay_
_Drags the main top-mast by the cap away:_
The main top-mast stay comes to the fore-mast head, and consequently
depends upon the fore-mast as its support. The _cap_ is a strong thick
block of wood, used to confine the upper and lower masts together, as the
one is raised at the head of the other. The principal caps of a ship are
those of the lower masts.
PAGE 129, l. 18.
_For every wave now smites the quivering yard._
The sea at this time ran so high, that it was impossible to descend from
the mast-head without being washed overboard.
PAGE 140, l. 6.
_All thoughts of happiness on earth are vain!_
“... _sed scilicet ultima semper_
_Expectanda dies homini; dicique beatus_
_Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet._”
FINIS.
Printed by C. Whittingham, Chiswick.
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