While, o'er the lawn, with dance and festive song,
Young Pleasure led the jocund hours along.
In gay luxuriance Ceres too was seen
To crown the valleys with eternal green:
For wealth, for valour courted and revered,
What Albion is, fair Candia then appeared,—
Ah! who the flight of ages can revoke?
The free-born spirit of her sons is broke,
They bow to Ottoman's imperious yoke.
No longer Fame the drooping heart inspires,
For stern Oppression quenched its genial fires,
Though still her fields, with golden harvest crowned,
Supply the barren shores of Greece around,
Sharp penury afflicts these wretched isles,

There Hope ne'er dawns, and Pleasure never smiles.
The vassal wretch, contented, drags his chain,
And hears his famished babes lament in vain.
These eyes have seen the dull reluctant soil
A seventh year mock the weary labourer's toil,
No blooming Venus on the desert shore,
Now views with triumph captive gods adore;
No lovely Helens now with fatal charms
Excite the avenging chiefs of Greece to arms;
No fair Penelopes enchant the eye,

For whom contending kings were proud to die;
Here sullen beauty sheds a twilight ray,
While sorrow bids her vernal bloom decay:
Those charms, so long renowned in classic strains,
Had dimly shone on Albion's happier plains!

THE SHIPWRECK.

THE HELMSMAN STRUCK BLIND: TWELVE SAILORS WASHED OVERBOARD.
BUT now Athenian mountains they descry,
And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high,
Where marble columns long by time defaced,
Moss-covered on the lofty cape are placed;
Then, reared by fair Devotion, to sustain
In elder times Tritonia's sacred fane,

1 Ceres, the goddess of corn.

2 Ottoman, the founder of the Turkish empire.

3 Venus, the goddess of beauty. 4 Helens; Helen, queen of Sparta, whose fatal charms caused the Trojan❘

war.

5 Penelopes; Penelope, the queen of

Ulysses, equally celebrated for her beauty and conjugal fidelity.

6 Colonna, a cape at the south-eastern extremity of Attica, anciently called Sunium, deriving its present name from the columns that remain of the old Temple of Minerva.

7 Tritonia, a name of Minerva.

The circling beach in murderous form appears,
Decisive goal of all their hopes and fears:
The seamen now in wild amazement see
The scene of ruin rise beneath the lees;
Swift from their minds elapsed all dangers past,
As dumb with terror they behold the last:
And now, while winged with ruin from on high,
Through the rent cloud the ragged lightnings fly,
A flash, quick glancing on the nerves of light,
Struck the pale helmsman with eternal night:
Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan behind,
Touched with compassion, gazed upon the blind;
And, while around his sad companions crowd,
He guides th' unhappy victim to the shroud:
“Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend !” he cries;
"Thy only succour on the mast relies."
The helm, bereft of half its vital force,
Now scarce subdued the wild unbridled course;
Quick to the abandoned wheel" Arion12 came
The ship's tempestuous sallies to reclaim :
The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh,
Seems more impatient o'er the waves to fly;
Fate spurs her on!--Thus, issuing from afar,
Advancing to the Sun some blazing star,
And, as it feels attraction's kindling force,
Springs onward with accelerated course.

The moment fraught with fate approaches fast!
While thronging sailors climb each quivering mast;
The ship no longer now must stem the land,
And "hard a starboard 13!" is the last command:
While every suppliant voice to Heaven applies,
The prow swift-wheeling to the westward flies;
Twelve sailors on the foremast who depend,
High on the platform of the top ascend:
Fatal retreat! for, while the plunging prow
Immerges headlong in the wave below,
Down-prest by watery weight the bowsprit bends,
And from above the stern deep-crashing rends:
Beneath her bow the floating ruins lie;

The foremast totters unsustained on high:

8 lee, the side of the vessel remote from the wind.

9 Rodmond, an officer of the ship. 10 shroud, the rope-ladder by which sailors ascend the mast.

11 wheel, in large vessels the helm is moved by a wheel.

12 Arion, an officer of the ship; Falconer is supposed to have described himself under this name.

13 hard a starboard," bring the helm as much to the right as possible."

K

14

fitted

And now the ship, fore-lifted by the sea,
Hurls the tall fabric backward o'er her lee;
While, in the general wreck, the faithful stay
Drags the main topmast by the cap1 away;
Flung from the mast, the seamen strive in vain
Through hostile floods their vessel to regain;
Weak hope, alas! they buffet long the wave,
And grasp at life, though sinking in the grave:
Till all exhausted, and bereft of strength,
O'erpowered they yield to cruel Fate at length:
The burying waters close around their head,
They sink for ever, numbered with the dead!

THE DEATH OF THE CAPTAIN.

NEXT, O unhappy chief! the eternal doom
Of Heaven decreed thee to the living tomb:
What scenes of misery torment thy view!
What painful struggles of thy dying crew:
Thy perished hopes all buried in the flood
O'erspread with corses, red with human blood!
So pierced with anguish hoary Priam13 gazed,
When Troy's imperial domes in ruin blazed;
While he, severest sorrow doomed to feel,
Expired beneath the victor's murdering steel—
Thus with his helpless partner to the last,
Sad refuge! Albert grasps the floating mast.
His soul could yet sustain this mortal blow,
But droops, alas! beneath superior woe;
For now strong nature's sympathetic chain
Tugs at his yearning heart with powerful strain;
His faithful wife, for ever doomed 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 resigned;
And, as the tumbling waters o'er him rolled,
His outstretched arms the master's legs enfold:

15 Priam, the aged king of Troy, who just lived long enough to witness the destruction of that city.

Sad Albert feels their dissolution near,
And strives in vain his fettered limbs to clear,
For death bids ev'ry clinching joint adhere:
All faint, to Heaven he throws his dying eyes,
And, "Oh! protect my wife and child!" he cries
The gushing stream rolls back the unfinished sound,
He gasps; and sinks amid the vast profound.

DESCRIPTION OF A NINETY-GUN SHIP.

AMIDST a wood of oaks with canvass leaves,
Which formed a floating forest on the waves,
There stood a tower, whose vast stupendous size
Reared its huge mast, and seemed to gore the skies.
From which a bloody pendant stretched afar
Its comet-tail denouncing ample war:
Two younger giants of inferior height
Displayed their sporting streamers to the sight:
The base below, another island rose,

Το

pour Britannia's thunder on her foes,
With bulk immense, like Ætna1, she surveys
Above the rest the lesser Cyclades18.
Profuse of gold, in lustre like the sun,
Splendid with regal luxury she shone,
Lavish in wealth, luxuriant in her pride,
Behold the gilded mass exulting ride!
Her curious prow divides the silver waves,
In the salt ooze her radiant sides she laves.
From stem to stern her wondrous length survey,
Rising a beauteous Venus from the sea;
Her stern with naval drapery engraved,

Showed mimic warriors, who the tempest braved;
Whose visage fierce defied the lashing surge,
Of Gallic1 pride, the emblematic scourge.
Tremendous figures, lo! her stern displays,
And holds a Pharos20 of distinguished blaze,
By night it shines a star of brightest form,
To point her way, and light her through the storm:
See dread engagements, pictured to the life,
See admirals maintain the glorious strife:

16 giants, the fore-mast and mizen- the Ægean Sea, fancifully compared

18 Cyclades, a cluster of islands in means the lantern in the poop of a

man-of-war.

Here breathing images in painted ire,
Seem for their country's freedom to expire;
Victorious fleets the flying fleets pursue,
Here, strikes a ship, and there exults a crew:
A frigate here blows up with hideous glare,
And adds fresh terrors to the bleeding war;
But leaving feigned ornaments, behold
Eight hundred youths of heart and sinew bold.
Mount up her shrouds, or to her tops ascend,
Some haul her braces21, some her fore-sail bend;
Full ninety brazen guns her port-holes fill,
Ready with nitrous magazines to kill,
From dread embrazures23 formidably peep,
And seem to threaten ruin to the deep;
On pivots fixed, the well-ranged swivels lie,
Or to point downward, or to brave the sky;
While peteraroes24 swell with infant rage,
Prepared, though small, with fury to engage.
Thus armed, may Britain long her state maintain,
And with triumphant navies rule the main.

MARK AKENSIDE

Was born A.D. 1721, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He studied medicine in the universities of Leyden and Edinburgh; from the former of which he received his doctor's degree. In 1744 he published his best poem, The Pleasures of Imagination. His professional career was, at first, very discouraging; but, when advanced in life, he attained such eminence as to be appointed physician to the queen. He died of fever, A.D. 1770.

Akenside does not rank very high among our poets; he possessed great vigour, and occasional sublimity of imagination; but his diction is stiff and cumbrous, and he frequently prefers obscurity to simplicity.

THE high-born soul

Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth
And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the volleyed lightning through the heavens;

21 braces, the ropes that secure the sails.

22 nitrous, gunpowder, in the manufacture of which nitre is used.

23 embrazures, the openings in the side through which the guns appear. 24 peteraroes, small cannons.