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They cry for aid, and long contend with Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend! he cries;
death.
Thy only succour on the mast relies!
High o'er their heads the rolling billows The helm, bereft of half its vital force,

sweep,

And down they sink in everlasting sleep. Bereft of power to help, their comrades

see

The wretched victims die beneath the lee; With fruitless sorrow their lost state be

moan;

Perhaps a fatal prelude to their own!

CAPE COLONNA IN SIGHT.

But now Athenian mountains they descry,

And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high.

Beside the cape's projecting verge is plac'd

A range of columns, long by time defac'd;
First planted by devotion, to sustain,
In elder times, Tritonia's sacred fane.
Foams the wild beach below with madd'n-

ing rage,

Where waves and rocks a dreadful com

bat wage.

The sickly heav'n, fermenting with its freight,

Still vomit, o'er the main the feverish weight:

And now, while wing'd with ruin from on high,

Thro' the rent cloud the raging lightnings fly,

A flash, quick-glancing on the nerves of light,

Struck the pale helmsman with eternal night:

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THE VESSEL ON THE ROCKS.

With mournful look the seamen ey'd the strand,

Where death's inexorable jaws expand. Swift from their minds elaps'd all dangers past,

As, dumb with terror, they beheld the last.

Now, on the trembling shrouds, before, behind,

In mute suspense they mount into the wind.

The Genius of the deep, on rapid wing, Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan be- The black eventful moment seemed to hind,

bring.

Touch'd with compassion, gaz'd upon the The fatal Sisters, on the surge before, blind; Yok'd their infernal horses to the prore. And, while around his sad companions The steersmen now receiv'd their last crowd,

He guides th' unhappy victim to the shroud.

command

To wheel the vessel sidelong to the strand:

Twelve sailors, on the foremast who de- Such torments agonize the damned breast,

pend,

High on the platform of the top ascend; Fatal retreat! for while the plunging prow Immerges headlong in the wave below, Down-prest by wat'ry weight, the bow

sprit bends,

And from above the stem deep crashing rends.

Beneath her bow the floating ruins lie; The foremast totters, unsustain'd on high: And now the ship, forlifted by the sea, Hurls the tall fabric backward o'er her lee; While, in the general wreck, the faithful stay Drags the main-topmast from its post away.

Flung from the mast, the seamen strive in vain

Thro' hostile floods their vessel to regain. The waves they buffet, till bereft of strength,

O'erpower'd they yield to cruel fate at length;

The hostile waters close around their head; They sink for ever, number'd with the dead!

Those who remain their fearful doom await,

Nor longer mourn their lost companions'

fate.

While fancy views the mansions of the

blest.

For Heaven's sweet help their suppliant cries implore;

But Heaven, relentless, deigns to help no more !

And now lash'd on by destiny severe, With horror fraught, the dreadful scene drew near!

The ship hangs hovering on the verge of death;

Hell yawns, rocks rise, and breakers roar beneath!

In vain, alas! the sacred shades of yore Would arm the mind with philosophic lore ;

In vain they'd teach us, at the latest breath,

To smile serene amid the pangs of death.
E'en Zeno's self, and Epictetus old,
This fell abyss had shudder'd to behold.
Had Socrates, for godlike virtue famed,
And wisest of the sons of men proclaim'd,
Beheld this scene of frenzy and distress,
His soul had trembled to its last recess !
O yet confirm my heart, ye powers above!
This last tremendous shock of fate to

prove.

The tottering frame of reason yet sustain !

The heart that bleeds with sorrows all its Nor let this total ruin whirl my brain!

own,

Forgets the pangs of friendship to bemoan. Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon here, With young Arion, on the mast appear; E'en they, amid th' unspeakable distress, In every look distracting thoughts confess;

In every vein the refluent blood congeals, And every bosom fatal terror feels. Enclosed with all the demons of the main, They view'd th'adjacent shore, but view'd in vain.

Such torments in the drear abodes of hell, Where sad despair laments with rueful yell, (9)

In vain the cords and axes were prepared,

For every wave now smites the quivering 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; Borne o'er a latent reef, the hull impends, Then thundering on the marble crags descends!

Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels, And o'er upheaving surges wounded reels,

2 L

So reels, convulsed with agonizing throws, The bleeding bull beneath the murd❜rer'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,

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 heaves on shore

alive;

The rest a speedier end of anguish knew, The fated victims shuddering cast their And prest the stony beach, a lifeless crew!

eyes

In wild despair; while yet another stroke, With strong 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 ruins 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 de-
plore

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 : Awhile they bore th' o'erwhelming billows' 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-yard-arm 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.

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 till the last, Sad refuge! Albert hugs the floating mast; His soul could yet sustain the mortal blow,

But droops, alas ! beneath superior woe; 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 en-
closed;

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 And, groaning, cling upon th' elusive roll'd,

weed!

His outstretch'd arms the master's legs Another billow bursts in boundless roar !
enfold.
Arion sinks! and Memory views no more!
Ha! total night and horror here preside!

Sad Albert feels the dissolution near,

And strives in vain his fetter'd limbs to My stunn'd ear tingles to the whizzing

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The gushing streams roll back th' un- Again they float incumbent on the wave!

finish'd sound!

He gasps! and sinks amid the vast profound.

Again the dismal prospect opens round, The wreck, the shores, the dying, and the drown'd!

Five only left of all the shipwrecked And see! enfeebled by repeated shocks, Those two who scramble on th' adjacent

throng,

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THREE SEAMEN SAVED.

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:

Awhile they wait th' exhausted wave's retreat,

Then climb slow up the beach with hands and feet.

In vain, his eyes no more Palemon found.
The demons of destruction hover nigh,
And thick their mortal shafts commis- O Heaven! deliver'd by whose sovereign
sion'd fly.

hand,

And now a breaking surge, with forceful Still on destruction's brink they shuddering

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ONE of the least known, but not the least original, contributors to Scottish literature, was Dougal Graham, the skellat bellman of Glasgow. He had somewhat of the grotesque, both in his physical and mental structure; but as a delineator of life in the humble strata in which he moved, he was unsurpassed. His vein in poetry, as to its manner, hardly rises above doggerel; but it is quite original, and in the wake of his genius, as an observer from his own comical point of view.

It is as the writer of the raciest and broadest-humoured of Scottish Chap

Books, that the keenness of his observation, and the point of his facetious wit, are best displayed; yet his Turnimspike, and Metrical History of the Rebellion of 1745-6, entitle him to be noticed among Scottish poets. The former, which is here given, Scott considered "sufficient to entitle him to immortality.” It is one of the first specimens in Scottish literature of the kind of caricature in which Shakespeare drew his Welshmen; and it was afterwards cleverly applied by some of the Whistlebinkians of the west.

Dougal was born about 1724, in the

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