That radiance beyond measure, on the Sun
Pour'dat transcendent! those keen-flashing rays
Thrown round his state, and to yon worlds afar
Supplying days and seasons, life and joy!
Such virtue he, the Majesty of Heaven,
Brightness original, all-bounteous king,
Hath to his creature lent, and crown'd his sphere
With matchless glory. Yet not all alike
Resplendent in these liquid regions pure,
Thick mists, condensing, darken into spots,
And dim the day. Whence that malignant light,
When Cæsar bled, which sadden'd all the year
With long eclipse. Some at the centre rise
In shady circles, like the Moon beheld
From Earth, when she her unenlighten'd face
Turns thitherward opaque: a space they brood
In congregated clouds; then breaking float
To all sides round. Dilated some and dense,
Broad as Earth's surface each, by slow degrees
Spread from the confines of the light along,
Usurping half the sphere, and swim obscure
On to its adverse coast; till there they set,
Or vanish scatter'd: measuring thus the time,
That round its axle whirls the radiant orb.
Fairest of beings! first-created light!
Prime cause of beauty! for from thee alone,
The sparkling gem, the vegetable race,
The nobler worlds that live and breathe, their
The lovely hues peculiar to cach tribe,
From the unfailing source of splendour draw!
In thy pure shine, with transport I survey
This firmament, and these her rolling worlds,"
Their magnitudes, and motions: those how vast!
How rapid these! with swiftness unconceiv'd,
From west to east in solemn pomp revolv'd,
Unerring, undisturb'd; the Sun's bright train,
Progressive through the sky's light fluent borne
Around their centre. Mercury the first,
Near bordering on the day, with speedy wheel
Flies swiftest on, inflaming where he comes,
With sevenfold splendour, all his azure road.
Next Venus to the westward of the Sun, Full orb'd her face, a golden plain of light, Circles her larger round. Fair morning-star! That leads on dawning day to yonder world, The seat of man, hung in the heavens remote, Whose northern hemisphere, descending, sees The Sun arise; as through the zodiac roll'd, Full in the middle path oblique she winds Her annual orb: aad by her side the Moon, Companion of her flight, whose solemn beams, Nocturnal, to her darken'd globe supply A softer day-light; whose attractive power Swells all her seas and oceans into tides, From the mid-deeps o'erflowing to their shores. Beyond the sphere of Mars, in distant skies, Revolves the mighty magnitude of Jove, With kingly state, the rival of the Sun. About him round, four planetary moons, On Earth with wonder all night long beheld, Moon above moon, his fair attendants, dance. These, in th' horizon, slow-ascending climb The steep of Heaven, and, mingling in soft flow Their silver radiance, brighten as they rise. Those opposite roll downward from their noon To where the shade of Jove, outstretch'd in length A dusky cone immouse, darkens the sky Through many a region. To these bounds arriv'd, A gradual pale creeps dim o'er cach sad orb, Fading their lustre; till they sink involy'd
In total night, and disappear eclips'd.
By this, the sage, who, studious of the skies,
Heedful explores these late-discover'd worlds,
By this observ'd, the rapid progress finds
Of light itself: how swift the headlong ray
Shoots from the Sun's height through unbounded
space,
At once enlightening air, and Earth and Heaven.
Last, outmost Saturn walks his frontier-round,
The boundary of worlds; with his pale moons,
Faint-glimmering through the darkness night has
throwi:,
Deep-dy'd and dead, o'er this chill globe forlorn:
An endless desert, where extreme of cold
Eternal sits, as in his native seat,
On wintry hills of never-thawing ice!
Such Saturn's earth; and yet ev'n here the sight,
Amid these doleful scenes, new matter finds
Of wonder and delight! a mighty ring,
On each side rising from th' horizon's verge,
Self-pois'd in air, with its bright circle round
Encompasseth his orb. As night comes on,
Saturn's broad shade, cast on its eastern arch,
Climbs slowly to its height: and at th' approach
Of morn returning, with like stealthy pace
Draws westward off; till through the lucid round,
In distant view th' illumin'd skies are seen.
Beauteous appearance! by th' Almighty's hand
Peculiar fashion'd.-Thine these noble works,
Great, universal Ruler! Earth and Heaven
Are thine, spontaneous offspring of thy will,
Seen with transcendent ravishment sublime,
That lifts the soul to thee! a holy joy,
By reason prompted, and by reason swell'd
Beyond all height--for thou art infinite!
Thy virtual energy the frame of things
Pervading actuates: as at first thy hand
Diffus'd through endless space this limpid sky,
Vast ocean without storm, where these huge globes
Sail undisturb'd, a rounding voyage each;
Observant all of one unchanging law.
Simplicity divine by this sole rule,
The Maker's great establishment, these worlds
Revolve harmonious, world attracting world
With mutual love, and to their central Sun
All gravitating: now with quicken'd pace
Descending tow'rd the primal orb, and now
Receding slow, excursive from his bounds.
This spring of motion, this hid power infus'd
Through universal nature, first was known
To thee, great Newton! Britain's justest pride,
The boast of human race; whose towering thought,
In her amazing progress unconfin'd,
From truth to truth ascending, gain'd the height
Of science, whither mankind from afar
Gaze up astonish'd. Now beyond that height,
By death from frail mortality set free,
A pure intelligence he wings his way
Through wondrous scenes, new-open'd in the world
Invisible, amid the general quire
Of saints and angels, rapt with joy divine,
Which fills, o'erflows, and ravishes the soul!
His mind's clear vision from all darkness purg'd,
For God himself shines forth immediate there,
Through those eternal climes, the frame of things,
In its ideal harmony, to him
Stands all reveal'd.--
But how shall mortal wing
Attempt this blue profundity of Heaven,
Unfathomable, endless of extent!
Where unknown suns to unknown systems rise,
Whose numbers who shall tell? stupendous host!
In flaming millions through the vacant hung,
San beyond sun, and world to world unseen,
Measureless distance, unconceiv'd by thought!
Awful their order; each the central fire
Of his surrounding stars, whose whirling speed,
Solemn and silent, through the pathless void,
Nor change, nor errour knows. But, their ways,
By reason, bold adventurer, unexplor'd,
Instructed can declare! What search shall find
Their times and seasons! their appointed laws,
Peculiar their inhabitants of life,
And of intelligence, from scale to scale
Harmonious rising and in fix'd degree;
Numberless orders, each resembling each,
Yet all diverse!-Tremendous depth and height
Of wisdom and of power, that this great whole
Fram'd inexpressible, and still preserves,
An infinite of wonders!-Thou, supreme,
First, Independent Cause, whose presence fills
Nature's vast circle, and whose pleasure moves,
Father of human kind! the Muse's wing
Sustaining guide, while to the heights of Heaven,
Roaming th' interminable vast of space,
She rises, tracing thy almighty hand
In its dread operations. Where is now
The seat of mankind, Earth? where her great scenes
Of wars and triumphs? empires fam'd of old,
Assyrian, Roman? or of later name,
Peruvian, Mexican, in that new world,
Beyond the wide Atlantic, late disclos'd?
Incredible to tell! thick, vapoury mists,
From every shore exhaling, mix obscure
Innumerable clouds, dispreading slow,
And deepening shade on shade; till the faint globe,
Mournful of aspect, calls in all his beams.
Millions of lives, that live but in his light,
With horrour see, from distant spheres around,
The source of day expire, and all his worlds
At once involv'd in everlasting night!
Such this dread revolution: Heaven itself,
Subject to change, so feels the waste of years.
So this cerulian round, the work divine
Of God's own hand, shall fade; and empty night
Reign solitary, where these stars now roll
From west to east their periods: where the train
Of comets wander the r eccentric ways,
With infinite excursion, through th' immense
Of ether, traversing from sky to sky
Ten thousand regions in their winding road,
Whose length to trace imagination fails!
Various their paths; without resistance all
Through these free spaces borne: of various face;
Enkindled this with beams of angry light,
Shot circling from its orb in sanguine showers:
That, through the shade of night, projecting huge,
In horrid trail, a spire of dusky flame,
Embody'd mists and vapours, whose fir'd mass
Keen vibrates, streaming a red length of air.
While distant orbs, with wonder and amaze,
Mark its approach, and night by night alarm'd
Its dreaded progress watch, as of a foe
Whose march is ever fatal; in whose train
Where is their place?-Let proud Ambition pause, Famine, and War, and desolating Plague,
And sicken at the vanity that prompts
His little deeds-With Earth, those nearer orbs,
Surrounding planets, late so glorious seen,
And each a world, are now for sight too small;
Are almost lost to thought. The Sun himself,
Ocean of flame, but twinkles from afar,
A glimmering star amid the train of night!
While in these deep abysses of the sky,
Spaces incomprehensible, new suns,
Crown'd with unborrow'd beams, illustrious shine;
Arcturus here, and here the Pleiades,
Amid the northern host: nor with less state,'
At sumless distance, huge Orion's orbs,
Each in his sphere refulgent, and the noon
Of Syrius, burning through the south of Heaven.
Myriads beyond, with blended rays, inflame
The milky way, whose stream of vivid light,
Pour'd from innumerable fountains round,
Flows trembling, wave on wave, from sun to sun,
And whitens the long path to Heaven's extreme:
Distinguish'd tract! But as with upward flight,
Soaring, I gain th' immensurable steep,
Contiguous stars, in bright profusion sown
Through these wide fields, all broaden into suns,
Amazing, sever'd each by gulfs of air,
In circuit ample as the solar heavens.
From this dread eminence, where endless day,
Day without cloud abides, alone and fill'd
With holy horrour, trembling I survey
Now downward through the universal sphere
Already past; now up to the heights untry'd,
And of th' enlarging prospect find no bound!
About me on each hand new wonders rise
In long succession; here pure scenes of light,
Dazzling the view; here nameless worlds afar,
Yet undiscover'd: there a dying Sun,
Grown dim with age, whose orb of flame extinct,
Each on his pale horse rides; the ministers
Of angry Heaven, to scourge offending worlds!
But lo! where one, from some far world return'd,
Shines out with sudden glare through yonder sky,
Region of darkness, where a Sun's lost globe,
Deep overwhelm'd with night, extinguish'd lies.
By some hid power attracted from his path,
Fearful commotion! into that dusk tract,
The devious comet, steep descending, falls
With all his flames, rekindling into life
Th' exhausted orb: and swift a flood of light
Breaks forth diffusive through the gloom, and spreads
In orient streams to his fair train afar
Of moving fires, from night's dominion won,
And wondering at the morn's unhop'd return.
In still amazement lost, th' awaken'd mind
Contemplates this great view, a Sun restor`d
With all his worlds! while thus at large her flight
Ranges these untrac'd scenes, progressive borne
Far through ethereal ground, the boundless walk
Of spirits, daily travellers from Heaven;
Who pass the mystic gulf to journey here,
Searching th' Almighty Maker in his works
From worlds to worlds, and, in triumphant quire
Of voice and harp, extolling his high praise.
Immortal natures! cloth'd with brightness round,
Empyreal, from the source of light effus'd,
More orient than the noon-day's stainless beam.
Their will unerring; their affections pure,
And glowing fervent warmth of love divine,
Whose object God alone: for all things else,
Created beauty, and created good,
Illusive all, can charm the soul no more.
Sublime their intellect, and without spot,
Enlarg'd to draw Truth's endless prospect in,
Ineffable, eternity and time;
The train of beings, all by gradual scale
Descending, sumless orders and degrees;
Th' unsounded depth, which mortals dare not try,
Of God's perfections; how these heavens first sprung
From unprolific night; how mov'd and rul'd
In number, weight, and measure; what hid laws,
Inexplicable, guide the moral world.
Active as flame, with prompt obedience all
The will Heaven fulfil: some his fierce wrath
Bear through the nations, pestilence and war:
His copious goodness some, life, light, and bliss,
To thousands. Some the fate of empires rule,
Commission'd, sheltering with their guardian wings
The pious monarch, and the legal throne.
Nor is the sovereign, nor th' illustrious great,
Alone their care. To every lessening rank
Of worth propitious, these blest minds embrace
With universal love the just and good,
Wherever found; unpriz'd, perhaps unknown,
Deprest by fortune, and with hate pursued,
Or insult from the proud oppressor's brow.
Yet dear to Heaven, and meriting the watch
Of angels o'er his unambitious walk,
At morn or eve, when Nature's fairest face,
Calmly magnificent, inspires the soul
With virtuous raptures, prompting to forsake
The sin-born vanities, and low pursuits,
That busy human kind; to view their ways
With pity; to repay, for numerous wrongs,
Meekness and charity. Or, rais'd aloft,
Fir'd with ethereal ardour, to survey
The circuit of creation, all these suns
With all their worlds: and still from height to
By things created rising, last ascend
To that First Cause, who made, who governs all,
Fountain of being, self-existent power,
All-wise, all-good, who from eternal age
Endures, and fills th' immensity of space;
That infinite diffusion, where the mind
Conceives no limits; undistinguish'd void,
Invariable, where no land-marks are,
No paths to guide Imagination's flight.
ADDRESSED TO THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.
THE following poem was originally intended for the stage, and planned out, several years ago, into a regular tragedy. But the author found it necessary to change his first design, and to give his work the form it now appears in; for reasons with which it might be impertinent to trouble the public: though, to a man who thinks and feels in a certain manner, those reasons were invincibly strong.
ago, under the title of a Voyage to St. Kilda. The author, who had himself been upon the spot, describes at length the situation, extent, and produce of that solitary island; sketches out the natural history of the birds of season that transmigrate thither annually, and relates the singular customs that still prevailed among the inhabitants: a race of people then the most uncorrupted in their manners, and therefore the least unhappy in their lives, of any, perhaps, on the face of the whole Earth, To whom might have been applied what an ancient historian says of certain barbarous nations, when he compares them with their more civilized neighbours plus valuit apud hos ignorantia vitiorum, quam apud Græcos omnia philosophorum præcepta.
They live together, as in the greatest simplicity of heart, so in the most inviolable harmony and union of sentiments. They have neither silver nor gold; but barter among themselves for the few necessaries they may reciprocally want. To strangers they are extremely hospitable, and no less charitable to their own poor; for whose relief cach family in the island contributes its share monthly, and at every festival sends them besides a portion of mutton or beef. Both sexes have a genius to poetry; and compose not only songs, but picces of a more elevated turn, in their own language, which is very emphatical. One of those islanders, having been prevailed with to visit the greatest trading town in North Britain, was infinitely astonished at the length of the voyage, and at the mighty kingdoms, for such he reckoned the larger isles, by which they sailed. He would not venture himself into the streets of that city without being led by the hand. At sight of the great church, he owned that it was indeed a lofty rock; but insisted that, in his native country of St. Kilda, there were others still higher. However the caverns formed in it, so he named the pillars and arches on which it is raised, were hollowed, he said, more commodiously than any he had ever seen there. At the shake occasioned in the steeple, and the horrible din that sounded in his ears upon tolling out the great bells, he appeared under the utmost consternation, believing the frame of nature was falling to pieces about him. He thought the persons who wore masks, not distinguishing whether they were men or women, had been guilty of some ill thing, for which they did not dare to show their faces. The beauty and stateliness of the trees which he saw then for the first time, as in his own island there grows not a shrub, equally surprised and delighted him but he observed, with a kind of terrour, that as he passed among their branches, they pulled him back again. He had been persuaded to drink a pretty large dose of strong waters; and upon finding himself drowsy after it, and ready to fall into a slumber, which he fancied was to be his last, he expressed to his companions the great satisfaction he felt in so easy a passage out of this world; for, said he, it is attended with no kind of pain.
Among such sort of men it was that Aurelius sought refuge from the violence and cruelty of his re-enemies.
As the scene of the piece is laid in the most mote and unfrequented of all the Hebrides, or western isles that surround one part of Great Britain; it may not be improper to inform the reader, that he will find a particular account of it, ja a little treatise published near half a century
The time appears to have been towards the latter part of the reign of king Charles the Second: when those who governed Scotland under him, with no less cruelty than impolicy, made the people of that country desperate; and then plundered,
To thousand nations deals her nectar'd cup
Of pleasing bane, that soothes at once and kills,
Is yet a name unknown. But calm Content
That lives to reason; ancient Faith that binds
The plain community of guileless hearts
In love and union; Innocence of ill
Their guardian genius: these, the powers that rule
This little world, to all its sons secure
Man's happiest life; the soul serene and sound
From passion's rage, the body from disease.
Red on each cheek behold the rose of health;
Firm in each sinew vigour's pliant spring;
By temperance brac'd to peril and to pain,
Amid the floods they stem, or on the steep
Of upright rocks their straining steps surmount,
And close their eve in slumbers sweetly deep,
Beneath the north, within the circling swell
Of Ocean's raging sound. But last and best,
What Avarice, what Ambition shall not know,
True Liberty is theirs, the heaven-sent guest,
Who in the cave, or on th' uncultur'd wild,
With Independence dwells; and Peace of mind,
In youth, in age, their sun that never sets.
Daughter of Heaven and Nature, deign thy aid,
imprisoned, or butchered them, for the natural effects of such despair. The best and worthiest men were oft the objects of their most unrelenting fury. Under the title of fanatics, or seditious, they affected to herd, and of course persecuted, whoever wished well to his country, or ventured to stand up in defence of the laws and a legal government. I have now in my hands the copy of a warrant, signed by king Charles himself, for military execution upon them without process or conviction: and I know that the original is still kept in the secretary's office for that part of the united kingdom. Thus much I thought it necessary to say, that the reader may not be misled to look upon the relation given by Aurelius in the second canto, as drawn from the wantonness of imagina-For food or pastime. These light up their mou, tion, when it hardly arises to strict historical truth. What reception this poem may meet with, the author cannot foresee; and, in his humble, but happy retirement, he needs not be over anxious to know. He has endeavoured to make it one regular and consistent whole; to be true to nature in his thoughts, and to the genius of the language in his manner of expressing them. If he has succeeded in these points, but above all in effectually touching the passions, which, as it is the genuine pro-Spontaneous Muse! O, whether from the depth vince, so is it the great triumph, of poetry; the candour of his more discerning readers will readily overlook mistakes or failures in things of less importance.
THOU faithful partner of a heart thy own,
Whose pain, or pleasure, springs from thine alone;
Thou, true as Honour, as Compassion kind,
That, in sweet union, harmonize thy mind:
Here, while thy eyes, for sad Amyntor's woe,
And Theodora's wreck, with tears o'erflow,
O may thy friend's warm wish to Heaven preferr'd
For thee, for him, by gracious Heaven be heard!
So her fair hour of fortune shall be thine,
Unmix'd; and all Amyntor's fondness mine.
So, through long vernal life, with blended ray,
Shall Love light up, and Friendship close our day:
Till, summon'd late this lower heaven to leave,
One sigh shall end us, and one earth receive.
AMYNTOR AND THEODORA:
OR, THE HERMIT.
FAR in the watery waste, where his broad wave
From world to world the vast Atlantic rolls,
Or from the piny shores of Labrador
To frozen Thulé east, her airy height
Aloft to Heaven remotest Kilda lifts;
Last of the sea-girt Hebrides, that guard,
In filial train, Britannia's parent-coast.
Thrice happy land! though freezing on the verge
Of arctic skies; yet, blameless still of arts
That polish to deprave, each softer clime,
With simple Nature, simple Virtue blest!
Beyond Ambition's walk: where never War
Uprear'd his sanguine standard; nor unsheath'd
For wealth or power, the desolating sword.
Where Luxury, soft syren, who around
Of evening forest, brown with broadest shade;
Or from the brow sublime of vernal alp
As morning dawns; or from the vale at noon,
By some soft stream that slides with liquid foot
Through bowery groves, where Inspiration sits
And listens to thy lore, auspicious come!
O'er these wild waves, o'er this unharbour'd shore,
Thy wing high-hovering spread; and to the gale,
The boreal spirit breathing liberal round
From echoing hill to hill, the lyre attune
With answering cadence free, as best beseems
The tragic theme my plaintive verse unfolds.
Here, good Aurelius--and a scene more wild
The world around, or deeper solitude,
Affliction could not find-Aurelius here,
By fate unequal and the crime of war
Expell'd his native home, the sacred vale
That saw him blest, now wretched and unknown,
Wore out the slow remains of setting life
In bitterness of thought: and with the surge,
And with the sounding storin, his murmur'd moan
Would often mix-oft as remembrance sad
Th' unhappy past recall'd; a faithful wife,
Whom Love first chose, whom Reason long endear'd,
His soul's companion, and his softer friend;
With one fair daughter, in her rosy prime,
Her dawn of opening charms, defenceless left
Within a tyrant's grasp! his foe profess'd,
By civil madness, by intemperate zeal
For differing rites, embitter'd into hate,
And cruelty remorseless!-Thus he liv'd:
If this was life, to load the blast with sighs;
Hung o'er its edge, to swell the flood with tears,
At midnight hour: for midnight frequent heard
The lonely mourner, desolate of heart,
Pour all the husband, all the father forth
In unavailing anguish; stretch'd along
The naked beach; or shivering on the clift,
Smote with the wintry pole in bitter storm,
Hail, snow, and shower, dark-drifting round his head.
Such were his hours, till Time, the wretch's friend,
Life's great physician, skill'd alone to close,
Where sorrow long has wak'd, the weeping eye,
And from the brain, with baleful vapours black,
Each sullen spectre chase, his balm at length,
Lenient of pain, through every fever'd pulse
With gentlest hand infus'd. A pensive calm
Arose, but unassur'd: as, after winds
Of ruffling wind, the sea, subsiding slow,
Still trembles from the storm. Now Reason first,
Her throne resuming, bid Devotion raise
To Heaven his eye; and through the turbid mist
By sense dark-drawn between, adoring own,
Sole arbiter of fate, one Cause supreme,
All-just, all-wise, who bids what still is best,
In cloud, or sunshine; whose severest hand
Wounds but to heal, and chastens to amend.
Thus, in his bosom, every weak excess,
The rage of grief, the fellness of revenge,
To healthful measure temper'd and reduc'd
By Virtue's hand; and in her brightening beam
Each errour clear'd away, as fen-born fogs
Before th' ascending Sun; through faith he lives
Beyond Time's bounded continent, the walks
Of Sin and Death. Anticipating Heaven
In pious hope, he seems already there,
Safe on her sacred shore; and sees beyond,
In radiant view, the world of light and love,
Where Peace delights to dwell; where one fair morn
Still orient smiles, and one diffusive spring,
That fears no storm and shall no winter know,
Th' immortal year empurples. If a sigh
Yet murmurs from his breast, 'tis for the pangs
Those dearest names, a wife, a child must feel,
Still suffering in his fate: 'tis for a foe,
Who, deaf himself to mercy, may of Heaven
That mercy, when most wanted, ask in vain.
The Sun, now station'd with the lucid Twins,
O'er every southern clime had pour'd profuse
The rosy year; and in each pleasing hue,
That greens the leaf, or through the blossom glows
With florid light, his fairest month array'd:
While Zephyre, while the silver-footed Dews,
Her soft attendants, wide o'er field and grove
Fresh spirit breathe, and shed perfuming balm.
Nor here, in this chill region, on the brow
Of Winter's waste dominion, is unfelt
The ray ethereal, or unhail'd the rise
Of her mild reign. From warbling vale and hill,
With wild thyme flowering, betony, and balm,
Blue lavender and carmel's spicy root',
Song, fragrance, health, ambrosiate every breeze.
But, high above, the season full exerts
Its vernal force in yonder peopled rocks,
To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,
The birds of passage transmigrating come,
Unnumber'd colonies of foreign wing,
At Nature's summons their aerial state
Annual to found; and in bold voyage steer,
O'er this wide ocean, through yon pathless sky,
One certain flight to one appointed shore:
By Heaven's directive spirit, here to raise
Their temporary realm; and form secure,
Where food awaits them copious from the wave,
And shelter from the rock, their nuptial leagues:
Each tribe apart, and all on tasks of love,
To hatch the pregnant egg, to rear and guard
Their helpless infants, pionsly intent.
Led by the day abroad, with lonely step,
The root of this plant, otherwise named argatilis sylvaticus, is aromatic; and by the natives reckoned cordial to the stomach, See Martin's Western Isles of Scotland, p. 180.
And ruminating sweet and bitter thought,
Aurelius, from the western bay, his eye
Now rais'd to this amusive scene in air,
With wonder mark'd; now cast with level ray
Wide o'er the moving wilderness of waves,
From pole to pole through boundless space diffus'd,
Magnificently dreadful! where, at large,
Leviathan, with each inferior name
Of sea-born kinds, ten thousand thousand tribes,
Finds endless range for pasture and for sport,
Amaz'd he gazes, and adoring owns
The hand Almighty, who its channell❜d bed
Immeasurable sunk, and pour'd abroad,
Fenc'd with eternal mounds, the fluid sphere;
With every wind to waft large commerce on,
Join pole to pole, consociate sever'd worlds,
And link in bonds of intercourse and love
Earth's universal family. Now rose
Sweet evening's solemn hour. The Sun, declin'd,
Hung golden o'er this nether firmament;
Whose broad cerulean mirror, calmly bright,
Gave back his beamy visage to the sky
With splendour undiminish'd; and each cloud,
White, azure, purple, glowing round his throne
In fair aërial landscape. Here, alone
On Earth's remotest verge, Aurelius breath'd
The healthful gale, and felt the smiling scene
With awe-mix'd pleasure, musing as he hung
In silence o'er the billows bush'd beneath.
When lo! a sound, amid the wave-worn rocks,
Deaf-murmuring rose, and plaintive roll'd along
From cliff to cavern: as the breath of winds,
At twilight hour, remote and hollow heard
Through wintry pines, high-waving o'er the steep
Of sky-crown'd Appenine. The seapye ceas'd
At once to warble. Screaming, from his nest
The fulmar soar'd, and shot a westward flight
From shore to sea. On came, before her hour,
Invading Night, and hung the troubled sky
With fearful blackness round 2. Sad Ocean's face
A curling undulation shivery swept
From wave to wave: and now impetuous rose,
Thick cloud and storm and ruin on his wing,
The raging South, and headlong o'er the deep
Fell horrible, with broad-descending blast.
Aloft, and safe beneath a sheltering cliff,
Whose moss-grown summit on the distant flood
Projected frowns, Aurelius stood appall'd:
His stunn'd ear smote with all the thundering main!
His eye with mountains surging to the stars!
Commotion infinite.
Where yon last wave
Blends with the sky its foam, a ship in view
Shoots sudden forth, steep-falling from the clouds:
Yet distant seen and dim, till, onward borne
Before the blast, each growing sail expands,
Each mast aspires, and all th' advancing frame
Bounds on his eye distinct. With sharpen'd ken
Its course he watches, and in awful thought
That Power invokes, whose voice the wild winds bear,
Whose nod the surge reveres, to look from Heaven,
And save, who else must perish, wretched men,
In this dark hour, amid the dread abyss,
With fears amaz'd, by horrours compass'd round.
But O, ill-omen'd, death-devoted heads!
For Death bestrides the billow, nor your own,
Nor others' offer'd vows can stay the flight
Of instant fate. And, lo! his secret seat,
Where never sun-beam glimmer'd, deep amidst
2 See Martin's voyage to St. Kilda, p. 58.
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