Beside that anguish'd mother stood
God's servant undismay'd,
And told of Jesus' precious blood
For sinners' ransom paid—
Of love that said, in accents kind,
"To me let children come;
In me thy babes will mercy find
When fatherless they roam."
She feels her Saviour's cheering hold,
When comes the dreadful shock,
As when the shepherd's arms enfold
The feeble of the flock!
Which flies impatient from the village walk,
To climb the neighbouring cliffs, when, far below,
The cruel winds have hurl'd upon the coast
Some helpless bark; while sacred pity melts
The general eye, or terror's icy hand
Smites their distorted limbs and horrent hair;
While every mother closer to her breast
Catches her child, and, pointing where the waves
Foam through the shatter'd vessel, shrieks
As one poor wretch that spreads his piteous arms
For succour, swallow'd by the roaring surge,
As now another, dash'd against the rock,
Drops lifeless down. Oh! deemest thou, indeed,
No kind endearment here by nature given
To mutual terror and compassion's tears?
No sweetly-melting softness, which attracts,
O'er all that edge of pain, the social powers,
To this their proper action and their end?
'TIS pleasant by the cheerful hearth to hear
Of tempests and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe,
Then listen to the perilous tale again,
And, with an eager and suspended soul,
Woo terror to delight us. . . . But to hear
The roaring of the raging elements,
To know all human skill, all human strength,
Avail not, . . . to look round, and only see
The mountain wave, incumbent with its weight
Of bursting waters, o'er the reeling bark. . . .
O God, this is indeed a dreadful thing!
And he who hath endured the horror once
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm
Howl round his home, but he remembers it,
And thinks upon the suffering mariner.
THE Life-Boat!-the Life-Boat!-the billows are
And loud roars the tempest, and dark frowns the
And the vessel dismasted, is whirled in the sweep, That opens the grave of the fathomless deep.
The Life-Boat!-the Life-Boat!-the cry is of
As he rises in foam from the regions beneath; And the shriek, and the groan, and the prayer, and the sigh,
Are heard through the tempest that rages on high.
The Life-Boat!—the Life-Boat!-e'en Jesus, to
From the rage of the storm, and the ocean's cold
From the arrow of death, and from hell and its fires, To give hope to the living, ere nature expires.
The Life-Boat!—the Life-Boat!-Lo, Bethlehem's
Rises brillianter now than the light-house afar, And guides faithful souls in Christ's life-boat to sleep,
As the vessel whirls creaking, and sinks in the deep. COTTON.
HER mighty sails the breezes swell,
And fast she leaves the lessening land,
And from the shore the last farewell
Is waved by many a snowy hand;
And weeping eyes are on the main
Until its verge she wanders o'er ;—
But from that hour of parting pain,
Oh! she was never heard of more!
When on her wide and trackless path
Of desolation doomed to flee,
Say, sank she mid the blending wrath
Of racking cloud and rolling sea?
Or-where the land but mocks the eye-
Went drifting on a fatal shore?
Vain guesses all! Her destiny
Is dark!-she ne'er was heard of more!
The moon hath twelve times changed her form,
From glowing orb to crescent wan,
'Mid skies of calm and scowl of storm;
Since from her port that ship hath gone:
But ocean keeps its secret well;
And though we know that all is o'er,
hath seen-no tongue can tell Her fate:-she ne'er was heard of more!
Oh! were her tale of sorrow known,
'Twere something to the broken heart;
The pangs of doubt would then be gone,-
And fancy's endless dreams depart !—
It may not be :-there is no ray
By which her doom we may explore;
We only know she sailed away,
And ne'er was seen or heard of more!
THE SABBATH CASTAWAY.
SHE was a gallant bark, and long had braved
The threat'ning billow, when the tempest raved;
For He whose eyelid never yields to sleep
Had been her pilot through destruction's sweep,
Had blessed the crew with faith and hope in God-
Alike to them were calms or storms abroad.
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