THE SHIPWRECKED SOLITARY.
UNHAPPY he who, from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone.
Amid this world of death! Day after day,
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,
And views the main that ever toils below,
Still fondly forming, in the farthest verge,
Where the round ether mixes with the wave,
Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns
A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,
And hiss continual through the tedious night.
THE WRECKED MARINER TO A BIRD.
STAY, proud bird of the shore!
Carry my last breath with thee to the cliff,
Where waits our shattered skiff,
One that shall mark nor it nor lover more.
Fan, with thy plumage bright,
Her heaving heart to rest, as thou dost mine:
And gently to divine
The tearful tale, flap out her beacon-light.
THE SHIPWRECKED SOLITARY'S SONG.
With lone and lingering wail,-then lay thy head,
As thou thyself wert dead,
Upon her breast, that she may weep for me.
Now, let her bid false hope
For ever hide her beam, nor trust again
The peace-bereaving strain,—
Life has, but still far hence, choice flowers to crop.
Oh! bid her not repine,
And deem my loss too bitter to be borne
Yet all of passion scorn,
But the mild deepening memory of mine.
Thou art away! sweet wind!
Bear the last trickling tear-drop on thy wing,
And o'er her bosom fling
The love-fraught pearly shower, till rest it find!
THE SHIPWRECKED SOLITARY'S SONG TO
THOU spirit of the spangled night!
I woo thee from the watch-tower high,
Where thou dost sit to guide the bark
Of lonely mariner.
The winds are whistling o'er the wolds,
The distant main is moaning low;
Come, let us sit and weave a song—
A melancholy song!
Sweet is the scented gale of morn,
And sweet the noontide's fervid beam,
But sweeter far the solemn calm
That marks thy mournful reign.
I've passed here many a lonely year,
And never human voice have heard;
I've passed here many a lonely year,
A solitary man.
And I have lingered in the shade
From sultry noon's hot beam ; and I
Have knelt before my wicker door,
To sing my evening song:
And I have hailed the grey morn high
On the blue mountain's misty brow,
And tried to tune my little reed
To hymns of harmony :—
But never could I tune my reed,
At morn, or noon, or eve, so sweet,
As when upon the ocean shore
I hailed thy star-beam mild.
THE SHIPWRECKED SOLITARY'S SONG.
The day-spring brings not joy to me,
The noon, it whispers not of peace;
But oh! when darkness robes the heavens,
My woes are mixed with joy.
And then I talk, and often think
Aerial voices answer me;
And oh! I am not then alone
And when the blustering winter winds
Howl in the woods that clothe my cave,
I lay me on my lonely mat,
And pleasant are my dreams.
And fancy gives me back my wife,
And fancy gives me back my child;
She gives me back my little home,
And all its placid joys.
Then hateful is the morning hour,
That calls me from the dream of bliss,
To find myself still lone, and hear
The same dull sounds again :
The deep-toned winds, the moaning sea,
The whispering of the boding trees,
The brook's eternal flow, and oft
The condor's hollow scream.
THE SHIPWRECKED SOLITARY'S SABBATH.
Он! my heart bleeds to think there now may live
One hapless man, the remnant of a wreck,
Cast on some desert island of that main
Immense, which stretches from the Cochin shore
To Acapulco. Motionless he sits
As is the rock, his seat, gazing whole days,
With wandering eye, o'er all the watery waste:
Now striving to believe the albatross
A sail appearing on the horizon's verge;
Now vowing ne'er to cherish other hope
Than hope of death. Thus pass his weary hours,
Till welcome evening warn him that 'tis time,
Upon the shell-notched calendar, to mark
Another day, another dreary day,-
Changeless, for in these regions of the sun,
The wholesome law that dooms mankind to toil,
Bestowing grateful interchange of rest
And labour, is annulled; for there the trees,
Adorned at once with bud, and flower, and fruit,
Drop, as the breezes blow, a shower of bread
And blossoms on the ground: but yet by him,
The hermit of the deep, not unobserved
The Sabbath passes.-'Tis his great delight;
Each seventh eve he marks the farewell ray,
And loves, and sighs, to think,-that setting sun
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