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But what's the loss of treasure,

To losing of my dear?

Should you some coast be laid on
Where gold and di'monds grow,
You'd find a richer maiden,

But none that loves you so.

"How can they say that nature
Has nothing made in vain ;
Why, then, beneath the water,
Should hideous rocks remain?

No eyes the rocks discover

That lurk beneath the deep, To wreck the wand'ring lover, And leave the maid to weep."

All melancholy lying,

Thus wail'd she for her dear;
Repay'd each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear;
When o'er the white wave stooping
His floating corpse she spy'd,
Then, like a lily drooping,

She bow'd her head, and dy'd.

JOHN GAY.

[From The Seasons-Winter.]

HOSE sullen seas,

THO

That wash'd th' ungenial pole, will rest no more Beneath the shackles of the mighty north;

But, rousing all their waves, resistless heave.
And hark! the lengthening roar continuous runs
Athwart the rifted deep: at once it bursts,
And piles a thousand mountains to the clouds.
Ill fares the bark with trembling wretches charg'd,
That, tost amid the floating fragments, moors
Beneath the shelter of an icy isle,

While night o'erwhelms the sea, and horror looks
More horrible. Can human force endure

Th' assembled mischiefs that besiege them round?
Heart-gnawing hunger, fainting weariness,

The roar of winds and waves, the crush of ice,
Now ceasing, now renew'd with louder rage,

And in dire echoes bellowing round the main.
More to embroil the deep, Leviathan

And his unwieldy train, in dreadful sport,

Tempest the loosen'd brine; while, through the gloom, Far from the bleak inhospitable shore,

Loading the winds, is heard the hungry howl

Of famish'd monsters, there awaiting wrecks.

JAMES THOMSON.

[blocks in formation]

[From The Shipwreck, Canto iii.]

N vain the cords and axes were prepared,

IN

For every wave now smites the quivering yard: High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade, Then on her burst in terrible cascade; Across the foundered deck o'erwhelming roar, And foaming, swelling, bound upon the shore. Swift up the mountain billow now she flies, Her shattered top half buried in the skies; Borne o'er a latent reef the hull impends, Then thundering on the marble crag descends: Her ponderous bulk the dire concussion feels, And o'er upheaving surges wounded reelsAgain she plunges hark! a second shock Belges the splitting vessel on the rockDown on the vale of death, with dismal cries, The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes In wild despair; while yet another stroke With strong convulsion rends the solid oak:

Ah Heaven!-behold her crashing ribs divide

She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide.

WILLIAM FALCONER.

[From Retirement.]

CEAN exhibits, fathomless and broad,

OCEAN

Much of the power and majesty of God.

He swathes about the swelling of the deep,

That shines, and rests, as infants smile and sleep;
Vast as it is, it answers as it flows

The breathings of the lightest air that blows;
Curling and whitening over all the waste,

The rising waves obey the increasing blast,
Abrupt and horrid as the tempest roars,
Thunder and flash upon the steadfast shores,
Till He that rides the whirlwind checks the rein,
Then all the world of waters sleeps again.

WILLIAM COWPER.

Rondeau.

BLOW high, blow low, let tempests tear

The main-mast by the board;

My heart, with thoughts of thee, my dear,
And love, well-stored,

Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear,
The roaring winds, the raging sea,
In hopes on shore

To be once more

Safe moor'd with thee.

Aloft while mountains high we go,
The whistling winds that scud along,
And the surge roaring from below,

Shall my signal be

To think on thee,

And this shall be my song:

Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The main-mast by the board.

And on that night when all the crew
The mem'ry of their former lives
O'er flowing cans of flip renew,

And drink their sweethearts and their wives,
I'll heave a sigh and think on thee;
And as the ship rolls through the sea,
The burthen of my song shall be:

Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The main-mast by the board.

CHARLES DIBDIN.

B

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