First there came down a thawing rain, And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about When winter had gone and spring came back, Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. CONCLUSION. WHETHER the Sensitive-Plant, or that Whether that lady's gentle mind, I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet To own that death itself must be, That garden sweet, that lady fair, In truth have never passed away: "Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed! not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might No light, being themselves obscure. A VISION OF THE SEA. 'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven. And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from heaven, She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin And bend as if heaven was ruining in, Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass As if ocean had sunk from beneath them; they pass Tc their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound, And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed Through the low trailing rack of the tempest, is lost In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about; In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has past. The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to fold Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold, One deck is burst up from the waters below, And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other? Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank,— Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lau On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon, Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep, Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn, O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast Down the deep, which closed on them above and around, And the sharks and the dog-fish their graveclothes unbound, And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down From God on their wilderness. One after one |