The ship has shuddered as she rode

O'er mountain waves '

Forgive me, God!

Forgive me" - shriek'd the maid and knelt,

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 —

Had riv'n the labouring planks asunder,

The deck falls in what horrors then!

Blood, waves, and tackle, swords and men
Come mix'd together through the chasm ; —
Some wretches in their dying spasm

Still fighting on and some that call

"For God and IRAN !" as they fall!

Whose was the hand that turn'd

away

The perils of th' infuriate fray,

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,
Beneath the red volcano's shower!

But oh! the sights and sounds of dread
That shock'd her, ere her senses fled!
The yawning deck - the crowd that strove
Upon the tottering planks above -

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

Upon their blades, high toss'd about

Like meteor brands

as if throughout

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,
Shining above his fellow men,

As, on some black and troublous night,
The Star of EGYPT, whose proud light
Never hath beam'd on those who rest
In the White Islands of the West,"
Burns through the storm with looks of flame
That put heav'n's cloudier eyes to shame!

But no

-'twas but the minute's dream

A fantasy — and ere the scream
Had half-way pass'd her pallid lips,
A death-like swoon, a chill eclipse
Of soul and sense its darkness spread
Around her, and she sunk, as dead!

How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms are gone;
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray,
Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity, ·

7 "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,
Again upon the lap of Morn!

When the light blossoms, rudely torn
And scatter'd at the whirlwind's will,
Hang floating in the pure air still,
Filling it all with precious balm,
In gratitude for this sweet calm ;-
And every drop the thunder-showers
Have left upon the grass and flowers
Sparkles, as 'twere that lightning-gem
Whose liquid flame is born of them!
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.

When the blue waters rise and fall,
In sleepy sunshine mantling all;
And ev'n that swell the tempest leaves

Is like the full and silent heaves

Of lovers' hearts, when newly blest,
Too newly to be quite at rest!

Such was the golden hour, that broke
Upon the world, when HINDA woke
From her long trance, and heard around
No motion but the water's sound

Rippling against the vessel's side,

As slow it mounted o'er the tide.

But where is she? - her eyes are dark,

-

Are wilder'd still is this the bark,

The same, that from HARMOZIA's bay
Bore her at morn-whose bloody way

The sea-dog track'd? no strange and new
Is all that meets her wondering view.
Upon a galliot's deck she lies,

Beneath no rich pavilion's shade,
No plumes to fan her sleeping eyes,
Nor jasmine on her pillow laid.