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In vain the cords and axes were prepared, For now th' audacious seas insult the yard; High o'er the ship they throw a horrid shade, And o'er her burst in terrible cascade. Uplifted on the surge, to heaven she flies, Her shatter'd top half-buried in the skies, Then headlong plunging thunders on the ground, Earth groans! air trembles! and the deeps resound: Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels, And quivering with the wound, in torment reels: So reels, convulsed with agonizing throes, The bleeding bull beneath the murderer's blows. Again she plunges: hark! a second shock Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock: Down on the vale of Death, with dismal cries, The fated victims shuddering roll their eyes, In wild despair; while yet another stroke, With deep convulsion, rends the solid oak; Till like the mine, in whose infernal cell The lurking demons of destruction dwell, At length asunder torn, her frame divides: And crashing spreads in ruin o'er the tides.

O were it mine with tuneful 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 unrivall'd strains, deplore Th' impervious horrors of a leeward shore.

As o'er the surge, the stooping mainmast hung,
Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung;
Some, struggling, on a broken crag were cast,
And there by oozy tangles grappled fast:
Awile they bore th' o'erwhelming billow's rage,
Unequal combat with their fate to wage;
Till all benumb'd and feeble they forego
Their slippery hold, and sink to shades below.
Some, from the main-yardarm 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 perish'd 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 doom'd to feel,
Expired beneath the victor's murdering steel.
Thus with his helpless partners to the last,
Sad refuge! Albert hugs the floating mast;
His soul could yet sustain this mortal blow,
But droops, alas! beneath superior wo!
For now soft 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 outstretch'd arms the master's legs enfold-
Sad Albert feels the dissolution near,
And strives in vain his fetter'd limbs to clear;
For Death bids every clenching joint adhere.
All faint, to heaven he throws his dying eyes.
And "O protect my wife and child!" he cries:
The gushing stream rolls back th' unfinish'd
sound!

He gasps! he dies! and tumbles to the ground!
Five only left of all the perish'd throng,
Yet ride the pine which shoreward drives along;
With these Arion still his hold secures,
And all th' 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 commission d fly :
And now a breaking surge, with forceful sway,
Two next Arion furious tears away;

Hurl'd on the crags, behold, they gasp! they

bleed!

And groaning, cling upon th' illusive weed ;-
Another billow burst in boundless roar !
Arion sinks and Memory views no more!

Ah, total night and horror here preside!
My stunn'd ear tingles to the whizzing tide!
It is the 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 shores, 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'erwhelm'd, and never rise again!

Two, with Arion, yet the mast upbore,
That now above the ridges reach'd 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;
A while they wait th' exhausted waves' retreat,
Then climb slow up the beach with hands and
feet.

O Heaven! deliver'd by whose sovereign hand,
Still on the brink of hell 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 sicken'd spark of life revives;

Her magic powers their exiled health restore,
Till horror and despair are felt no more.
A troop of Grecians who inhabit nigh,
And oft these perils of the deep descry,
Roused by the blustering tempest of the night,
Anxious had climb'd Colonna's neighbouring
height;

When gazing downward on th' adjacent flood,
Full to their view the scene of ruin stood,
The surf with mangled bodies strew'd around,
And those yet breathing on the sea-wash'd ground!
Though lost to science and the nobler arts,
Yet Nature's lore inform'd 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 adventurous youth who reach'd the shore;
Panting, with eyes averted from the day,
Prone, helpless on the tangled beach he lay-
It is Palemon ;-0 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 dash'd, 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 clogg'd 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 array'd,
Thy image, lovely Anna, hung portray'd;
Th' unconscious figure smiling all serene,
Suspended in a golden chain was seen.
Hadst thou, soft maiden; in this hour of wo,
Beheld him writhing from the deadly blow,
What force of art, what language could express
Thine agony? thine exquisite distress?

But thou, alas! art doom'd 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 cruel pangs oppress'd,
In faltering accents thus his friend address'd :
"O rescued from destruction late so nigh,
Beneath whose fatal influence doom'd I lie;
Are we then exiled to this last retreat
Of life, unhappy! thus decreed to meet?
Ah! how unlike what yester-morn enjoy'd
Enchanting hopes, for ever now destroy'd!
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 control
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 re-

store,

When parted, hence, to England's distant shore,
Shouldst thou th' unwilling messenger of Fate
To him the tragic story first relate,
O! friendship's generous ardour then suppress,
Nor hint the fatal cause of my distress;
Nor let each horrid incident sustain
The lengthen'd 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 O, to lovely Anna shouldst thou tell
What dire untimely end thy friend befell,
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 pendant 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!

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That steals from Pity's eye the melting tear,
Of two chaste hearts by mutual passion join'd
To absence, sorrow, and despair consign'd,
O! then to swell the tides of social wo
That heal th' afflicted bosom they o'erflow,
While Memory dictates, this sad shipwreck tell,
And what distress thy wretched friend befell!
Then while in streams of soft compassion drown'd
The swains lament and maidens weep around;
While lisping children, touch'd with infant fear,
With wonder gaze, and drop th' unconscious tear;
O! 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;

sed scilicet ultima semper Expectanda dies homini; "dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet." Ovid. Met.

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 :
Transfix'd he stood with awful terror fill'd,
While down his cheek the silent drops distill'd.
"O ill-starr'd votary, of unspotted truth!
Untimely perish'd in the bloom of youth,
Should e'er thy friend arrive on Albion's land,
He will obey, though painful, thy demand:
His tongue the dreadful story shall display,
And all the horrors of this dismal day!
Disastrous day! what ruin has thou bred!
What anguish to the living and the dead!
How hast thou left the widow all forlorn,
And ever doom'd 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 shatter'd rafts and corses of the dead,
Three still alive, benumb'd 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.

ANNE LETITIA BARBAULD.

and Propriety of Public or Social Worship; and Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, or a Discourse for the Fast, which last appeared in 1793. In 1802, she removed, with Mr. Barbauld, to Stoke Newington; and in 1804, published selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a preliminary essay, which is regarded as her most successful effort in literary

THIS gifted authoress, the daughter of Dr. John Aikin, was born at Kilworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire, on the 20th of June, 1743. Her education was entirely domestic, but the quickness of apprehension, and desire for learning which she manifested, induced her father to lend her his assistance towards enabling her to obtain a knowledge of Latin and Greek. On the removal of Dr. Aikin to superintend the dissenting academy at Warring-criticism. In the same year, appeared her edition ton, in Lancashire, she accompanied him thither, in her fifteenth year, when she is said to have possessed great beauty of person and vivacity of intellect. The associates she met with at Warrington were in every way congenial to her mind, and among others, were Drs. Priestley and En-came a widow; and in 1810, appeared her edition field, with whom she formed an intimate acquaintance. In 1773, she was induced to publish a volume of her poems, which, in the course of the same year, went through four editions. They were followed by miscellaneous pieces in prose, by J. (her brother) and A. L. Aikin, which considerably added to her reputation.

In 1774, she married the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, with whom she removed to Palgrave, near Dis, in Suffolk, where her husband had charge of a dissenting congregation, and was about to open a boarding-school. Mrs. Barbauld assisted him in the task of instruction; and some of her pupils, who have since risen to literary eminence, among whom were the present Mr. Denman and Sir William Gell, have acknowledged the value of her lessons in English composition, and declamation. In 1775, appeared a small volume from her pen, entitled Devotional Pieces, compiled from the Psalms of David, &c.; a collection which met with little success and some animadversion. In 1778, she published her Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old; and, in 1781, Hymns in Prose, for Children; both of which may be said to have formed an era in the art of instruction, and the former has been translated into French, by M. Pasquier.

In 1785, Mrs. Barbauld and her husband gave up their school and visited the continent, whence they returned to England in June, 1786, and in the following year took up their residence at Hampstead. Our authoress now began to use her pen on the popular side of politics, and published, successively, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts; A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade; Remarks on Gilbert Wakefield's Inquiry into the Expediency

of The Correspondence of Richardson, in six volumes, duodecimo; but the most valuable part of this work is the very elegant and interesting life of that novelist, and the able review of his works, from the pen of our authoress. In 1808, she be

of The British Novelists, with an introductory essay, and biographical and critical notices prefixed to the works of each author. In the following year she published a collection of prose and verse, under the title of The Female Spectator; and in the same year, appeared that original offspring of her genius, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a poem. This was the last separate publication of Mrs. Barbauld, who died on the 9th of March, 1825, in the eighty-second year of her age. An edition of her works appeared in the same year, in two octavo volumes, with a memoir, by Lucy Aikin.

Mrs. Barbauld is one of the most eminent female writers which England has produced; and both in prose and poetry she is hardly surpassed by any of her sex, in the present age. With respect to the style, we shall, perhaps, best describe it, by calling it that of a female Johnson; and her Essay on Romances is a professed imitation of the manner of that great critic. He is himself said to have allowed it to be the best that was ever attempted; "because it reflected the colour of his thoughts, no less than the turn of his expressions." She is, however, not without a style of her own, which is graceful, easy, and natural: alike calculated to engage the most common, and the most elevated understanding. Her poems are addressed more to the feelings than to the imagination,—more to the reason than the senses; but the language never becomes prosaic, and has sublimity and pathos, totally free from bombast and affectation. The spirit of piety and benevolence that breathes through her works pervaded her life, and she is an amiable example to her sex that it is possible to combine, without danger to its morals or religious principles, a manly understanding with a feminine and susceptible heart.

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HAIL, generous Corsica! unconquer'd isle!
The fort of freedom; that amidst the waves
Stands like a rock of adamant, and dares
The wildest fury of the beating storm.

And are there yet, in this late sickly age,
Unkindly to the towering growths of virtue,
Such bold exalted spirits? Men whose deeds,
To the bright annals of old Greece opposed,
Would throw in shades her yet unrivall'd name,
And dim the lustre of her fairest page!
And glows the flame of Liberty so strong
In this lone speck of earth! this spot obscure,
Shaggy with woods, and crusted o'er with rock,
By slaves surrounded, and by slaves oppress'd!
What then should Britons feel?-should they not

catch

The warm contagion of heroic ardour,
And kindle at a fire so like their own?

And shrub of fragrant leaf, that clothes their sides
With living verdure; whence the clustering bee
Extracts her golden dews: the shining box
And sweet-leaved myrtle, aromatic thyme,
The prickly juniper, and the green leaf

Which feeds the spinning worm; while glowing
bright

Beneath the various foliage, wildly spreads
The arbutus, and rears his scarlet fruit
Luxuriant, mantling o'er the craggy steeps;
And thy own native laurel crowns the scene.
Hail to thy savage forests, awful, deep;
Thy tangled thickets, and thy crowded woods,
The haunt of herds untamed; which sullen bound
From rock to rock with fierce unsocial air,
And wilder gaze, as conscious of the power
That loves to reign amid the lonely scenes
Of unquell'd nature: precipices huge,
And tumbling torrents; trackless deserts, plains
Fenced in with guardian rocks, whose quarries

teem

With shining steel, that to the cultured fields
And sunny hills which wave with bearded grain,
Defends their homely produce. Liberty,
The mountain goddess, loves to range at large
Amid such scenes, and on the iron soil
Prints her majestic step. For these she scorns
The green enamell'd vales, the velvet lap

Of smooth savannahs, where the pillow'd head

Such were the working thoughts which swell'd Of luxury reposes; balmy gales,

the breast

Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim
And views beyond the narrow beaten track
By trivial fancy trod, he turn'd his course
From polish'd Gallia's soft delicious vales,
From the gray relics of imperial Rome,
From her long galleries of laurell'd stone,
Her chisell'd heroes and her marble gods,
Whose dumb majestic pomp yet awes the world,
To animated forms of patriot zeal;
Warm in the living majesty of virtue;

Elate with fearless spirit; firm; resolved;
By fortune nor subdued, nor awed by power.

And bowers that breathe of bliss. For these,

when first

This isle emerging like a beauteous gem
From the dark bosom of the Tyrrhene main,
Rear'd its fair front, she mark'd it for her own,
And with her spirit warm'd. Her genuine sons,
A broken remnant, from the generous stock
Of ancient Greece, from Sparta's sad remains,
True to their high descent, preserved unquench'd
The sacred fire through many a barbarous age:
Whom, nor the iron rod of cruel Carthage,
Nor the dread sceptre of imperial Rome,
Nor bloody Goth, nor grisly Saracen,

How raptured fancy burns, while warm in Nor the long galling yoke of proud Liguria,

thought

I trace the pictured landscape; while I kiss
With pilgrim lips devout the sacred soil
Stain'd with the blood of heroes. Cyrnus, hail!
Hail to thy rocky, deep indented shores,
And pointed cliffs, which hear the chafing deep
Incessant foaming round thy shaggy sides.
Hail to thy winding bays, thy sheltering ports,
And ample harbours, which inviting stretch
Their hospitable arms to every sail :

Could crush into subjection. Still unquell'd
They rose superior, bursting from their chains,
And claim'd man's dearest birthright, liberty:
And long, through many a hard unequal strife,
Maintain'd the glorious conflict; long withstood,
With single arm, the whole collected force
Of haughty Genoa, and ambitious Gaul.
And shall withstand it-Trust the faithful muse!
It is not in the force of mortal arm,
Scarcely in fate, to bind the struggling soul

Thy numerous streams, that bursting from the That gall'd by wanton power, indignant swells cliffs

Down the steep channell'd rock impetuous pour
With grateful murmur: on the fearful edge
Of the rude precipice, thy hamlets brown
And straw-roof'd cots, which from the level vale
Scarce seen, amongst the craggy hanging cliffs
Seem like an eagle's nest aërial built.

Thy swelling mountains, brown with solemn
shade

Of various trees, that wave their giant arms
O'er the rough sons of freedom; lofty pines,
And hardy fir, and ilex ever green,

Against oppression; breathing great revenge,
Careless of life, determined to be free.
And favouring Heaven approves for see the

man,

:

Born to exalt his own, and give mankind
A glimpse of higher natures: just, as great;
The soul of council, and the nerve of war;
Of high unshaken spirit, temper'd sweet
With soft urbanity, and polish'd grace,
And attic wit, and gay unstudied smiles :
Whom Heaven in some propitious hour endow'd
With every purer virtue: gave him all

And spreading chestnut, with each humbler plant, That lifts the hero, or adorns the man.

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