The skies spun like a mighty wheel:
I saw the trees like drunkards reel,
And a slight flash sprung o'er my eyes,
Which saw no further: he who dies
Can die no more than then I died,
O'ertortured by that ghastly ride.
A trampling troop; I see them come
In one vast squadron they advance!
The sight renerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment with a faint low neigh,
He answered, and then fell;
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs immovable:
His first and last career is done!
On came the troop-they saw him stoop,
They saw me strangely bound along
His back with many a bloody thong;
They snort-they foam-neigh-swerve aside,
And backward to the forest fly,
By instinct, from a human eye.
They left me there to my despair,
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch,
Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch,-
Relieved from that unwonted weight,
From which I could not extricate
Nor him nor me; and there we lay,
The dying on the dead.
THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own;
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,-
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee:
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them, while they were free,
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage: their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:-Not so thou:
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
(Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving,)-boundless, endless, and sublime—
The image of Eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
THE king was on his throne,
The satraps thronged the hall!
A thousand bright lamps shone
O'er that high festival.
A thousand cups of gold,
In Judah deemed divine-
Jehovah's vessels hold
The godless Heathen's wine.
In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand;
The fingers of a man ;—
A solitary hand
Along the letters ran,
And traced them like a wand.
The monarch saw, and shook,
And bade no more rejoice;
All bloodless waxed his look,
And tremulous his voice.
"Let the men of lore appear,
The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear
Which mar our royal mirth."
Chaldea's seers are good,
But here they have no skill;
And the unknown letters stood
Untold and awful still.
And Babel's men of
Are wise and deep in lore;
But now they were not sage: They saw-but knew no more.
A captive in the land,
A stranger and a youth, He heard the king's command, He saw that writing's truth. The lamps around were bright, The prophecy in view; He read it on that night— The morrow proved it true.
"Belshazzar's grave is made,
His kingdom passed away,
He, in the balance weighed,
Is light and worthless clay-
The shroud, his robe of state,
His canopy the stone:
The Persian on his throne!"
As day advanced the weather seemed to abate,
And then the leak they reckoned to reduce,
And keep the ship afloat, though three feet yet
Kept two hand and one chain pump still in use.
The wind blew fresh again: as it grew late
A squall came on, and while some guns broke loose,
A gust-which all descriptive power transcends-
Laid with one blast the ship on her beam-ends.
Immediately the masts were cut
away,
Both main and mizen; first the mizen went,
The mainmast followed: but the ship still lay
Like a mere log, and baffled our intent.
Foremast and bowsprit were cut down, and they
Eased her at last (although we never meant
To part with all 'till every hope was blighted),
And then with violence the old ship righted.
"Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one whose fate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here
At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hencoops, spars,
And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose,
That still could keep afloat the struggling tars;
For yet they strove, although of no great use.
There was no light in heaven but a few stars ;-
The boats put off o'ercrowded with their crews:
She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
And, going down head-foremost-sunk, in short.
Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell-
Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave ;-
Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawned around her like a hell,
And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.
And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.
21. THE BATTLE OF ALBuera.
HARK! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note ?
Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath?
Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote,-
Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath
Tyrants and tyrants' slaves? The fires of death,
The bale-fires, flash on high-from rock to rock,
Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe.
Death rides upon the sulphury siroc;
Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock.
Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands !
His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun;
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
that scorcheth all it glares upon!
Restless it rolls; now fixed, and now anon
Flashing afar ;—and at his iron feet,
Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done;
For on this morn three potent nations meet,
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet!
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