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!

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 !

await,

Nor longer mourn their lost companions'

fate.

The heart that bleeds with sorrows all its

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)

This last tremendous shock of fate to

prove.

The tottering frame of reason yet sustain ! Nor let this total ruin whirl my brain!

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,

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.

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 enclosed;

His lovely daughter left without a friend Her innocence to succour and defend ;

thrown

On marble ridges, die without a groan. Three with Palemon on their skill depend, And from the wreck on oars and rafts descend.

To lawless guilt, that flatters to betray. While these reflections rack his feeling mind

Rodmond, who hung beside, his grasp resign'd;

weed !

Sad Albert feels the dissolution near,

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!

throng,

Then climb slow up the beach with hands and feet.

hand,

stand,

Receive the languid incense they bestow,

That damp with death appears yet not to

glow.

To thee each soul the warm oblation pays, With trembling ardour, of unequal praise; In every heart dismay with wonder strives, And Hope the sicken'd spark of life revives: Her magic powers their exiled health restore,

Till horror and despair are felt no more.

A troop of Grecians who inhabit nigh, And oft these perils of the deep descry, Roused by the blustering tempest of the

night,

Anxious had climb'd Colonna's neigh

bouring height;

When gazing downward on th' adjacent flood,

Full to their view the scene of ruin stood; The surf with mangled bodies strew'd around,

Yet nature's lore inform'd their feeling hearts:

Straight down the vale with hast'ning steps they hied,

Th' unhappy sufferers to assist and guide. Now had the Grecians on the beach arrived,

To aid the helpless few who yet survived, While passing they behold the waves o'erspread

With shatter'd rafts and corses of the dead;

Three still alive, benumb'd and faint they

find,

In mournful silence on a rock reclined. The generous natives, moved with social

pain,

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