Yet was there light around her brow, A holiness in those dark eyes, Which show'd - though wandering earthward now, Her spirit's home was in the skies. Is always pure, ev'n while it errs; So wholly had her mind forgot Clash'd swords, and tongues that seem'd to vie But hark! that war-whoop on the deck- The ship has shuddered as she rode O'er mountain waves"Forgive me, God! Trembling all over, for she felt As if her judgment-hour was near; While crouching round, half dead with fear, Her hand-maids clung, nor breath'd, nor stirr'd — When, hark! a second crash -a third And now, as if a bolt of thunder Had riv'n the labouring planks asunder, Blood, waves, and tackle, swords and men Whose was the hand that turn'd away And snatch'd her breathless from beneath This wilderment of wreck and death? She knew not for a faintness came Chill o'er her, and her sinking frame Amid the ruins of that hour Lay, like a pale and scorched flower, But oh! the sights and sounds of dread The yawning deck - the crowd that strove The sail, whose fragments, shivering o'er The strugglers' heads, all dash'd with gore, Flutter'd like bloody flags the clash Of sabres, and the lightning's flash The elements one fury ran, One general rage, that left a doubt Which was the fiercer, Heav'n or Man! 'Twas fancy all-yet once she thought, While yet her fading eyes could see, High on the ruin'd deck she caught A glimpse of that unearthly form, That glory of her soul,-ev'n then, 6 The meteors that Pliny calls "faces.” Amid the whirl of wreck and storm, As, on some black and troublous night, In the White Islands of the West, 8 Burns through the storm with looks of flame But no -'twas but the minute's dream A fantasy and ere the scream Had half-way pass'd her pallid lips, How calm, how beautiful comes on «The brilliant Canopus, unseen in European climates." Brown. 8 V. Wilford's learned Essays on the Sacred Isles in the West. Fresh as if Day again were born, When the light blossoms, rudely torn 9 When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze, There blow a thousand gentle airs, And each a different perfume bears, As if the loveliest plants and trees Had vassal breezes of their own To watch and wait on them alone, And waft no other breath than theirs ! 9 A precious stone of the Indies, called by the ancients Ceraunium, because it was supposed to be found in places where thunder had fallen. Tertullian says it has a glittering appearance, as if there had been fire in it; and the author of the Dissertation in Harris's Voyages supposes it to be the opal. |