Obrazy na stronie
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FROM THE SAME. Council of officers-Albert's directions to prepare for the last extremities.

AGAIN the chief th' instructive draught extends, And o'er the figured plane attentive bends! To him the motion of each orb was known, That wheels around the sun's refulgent throne; But here, alas, his science nought avails! Art droops unequal, and experience fails. The different traverses since twilight made, He on the hydrographic circle laid; Then the broad angle of lee-way explored, As swept across the graduated chord. Her place discover'd by the rules of art, Unusual terrors shook the master's heart; When Falconera's rugged isle he found Within her drift, with shelves, and breakers bound; For if on those destructive shallows tost, The helpless bark with all her crew are lost: As fatal still appears, that danger o'er, The steep St. George, and rocky Gardalor. With him the pilots of their hopeless state In mournful consultation now debate. Not more perplexing doubts her chiefs appal When some proud city verges to her fall; While ruin glares around, and pale affright Convenes her councils in the dead of night— No blazon'd trophies o'er their concave spread, Nor storied pillars raised aloft the head: But here the queen of shade around them threw Her dragon-wing, disastrous to the view! Dire was the scene, with whirlwind, hail, and Black melancholy ruled the fearful hour! [shower; Beneath tremendous roll'd the flashing tide, Where fate on every billow seem'd to rideInclosed with ills, by peril unsubdued, Great in distress the master-seaman stood : Skill'd to command, deliberate to advise; Expert in action, and in council wise ; Thus to his partners, by the crew unheard, The dictates of his soul the chief referr'd:

Ye faithful mates, who all my troubles share, Approved companions of your master's care! To you, alas! 'twere fruitless now to tell Our sad distress, already known too well! This morn with favouring gales the port we left, Though now of every flattering hope bereft: No skill nor long experience could forecast Th' unseen approach of this destructive blast. These seas, where storms at various seasons blow, No reigning winds nor certain omens know, The hour, th' occasion, all your skill demands; A leaky ship embay'd by dangerous lands, Our bark no transient jeopardy surrounds; Groaning she lies beneath unnumber'd wounds, 'Tis ours the doubtful remedy to find; To shun the fury of the seas and wind. For in this hollow swell, with labour sore, Her flank can bear the bursting floods no more; Yet this or other ills she must endure; A dire disease, and desperate is the cure!

Thus two expedients offer'd to your choice,
Alone require your counsel and your voice.
These only in our power are left to try:
To perish here, or from the storm to fly.
The doubtful balance in my judgment cast,
For various reasons I prefer the last.
'Tis true, the vessel and her costly freight,
To me consign'd, my orders only wait;
Yet, since the charge of every life is mine,
To equal votes our counsels I resign;
Forbid it, Heaven, that in this dreadful hour,
I claim the dangerous reins of purblind power!
But should we now resolve to bear away,
Our hopeless state can suffer no delay.
Nor can we, thus bereft of every sail,
Attempt to steer obliquely on the gale ;
For then, if broaching sideward to the sea,
Our dropsy'd ship may founder by the lee ;
No more obedient to the pilot's power,
Th' o'erwhelming wave may soon her frame devour.
He said; the listening mates with fix'd regard,
And silent reverence, his opinion heard.
Important was the question in debate,
And o'er their counsels hung impending fate.
Rodmond, in many a scene of peril tried,
Had oft the master's happier skill descried.
Yet now,
the hour, the scene, the occasion known,
Perhaps with equal right preferr'd his own.
Of long experience in the naval art,
Blunt was his speech, and naked was his heart;
Alike to him each climate and each blast;
The first in danger, in retreat the last :
Sagacious balancing th' opposed events,
From Albert his opinion thus dissents.

Too true the perils of the present hour,
Where toils exceeding toils our strength o'erpower!
Yet whither can we turn, what road pursue,
With death before still opening on the view?
Our bark, 'tis true, no shelter here can find,
Sore shatter'd by the ruffian seas and wind.
Yet with what hope of refuge can we flee,
Chased by this tempest and outrageous sea?
For while its violence the tempest keeps,
Bereft of every sail we roam the deeps:
At random driven, to present death we haste;
And one short hour perhaps may be our last.
In vain the gulf of Corinth, on our lee,
Now opens to her ports a passage free;
Since, if before the blast the vessel flies,
Full in her track unnumber'd dangers rise.
Here Falconera spreads her lurking snares;
There distant Greece her rugged shelfs prepares.
Should once her bottom strike that rocky shore,
The splitting bark that instant were no more;
Nor she alone, but with her all the crew
Beyond relief were doom'd to perish too.
Thus if to scud too rashly we consent,
Too late in fatal hour we may repent.
Then of our purpose this appears the scope,
To weigh the danger with the doubtful hope.
Though sorely buffeted by every sea,
Our hull unbroken long may try a-lee.

The crew, though harass'd long with toils severe,
Still at their pumps perceive no hazards near,
Shall we, incautious, then the danger tell,
At once their courage and their hope to quell ?
Prudence forbids !-This southern tempest soon
May change its quarter with the changing moon :
Its rage, though terrible, may soon subside,
Nor into mountains lash th' unruly tide.
These leaks shall then decrease; the sails once more
Direct our course to some relieving shore.-

Thus while he spoke, around from man to man
At either pump a hollow murmur ran.
For while the vessel, through unnumber'd chinks,
Above, below, th' invading waters drinks,
Sounding her depth they eyed the wetted scale,
And lo! the leaks o'er all their powers prevail.
Yet in their post, by terrors unsubdued,
They with redoubling force their task pursued.
And now the senior-pilot seem'd to wait
Arion's voice to close the dark debate.
Though many a bitter storm, with peril fraught,

In Neptune's school the wandering stripling taught,

But haply Falconera we may shun;
And far to Grecian coasts is yet the run:
Less harass'd then, our scudding ship may bear
Th' assaulting surge repell'd upon her rear;
Even then the wearied storms as soon shall die,
Or less torment the groaning pines on high.
Should we at last be driven by dire decree
Too near the fatal margin of the sea,
The hull dismasted there a while may ride,
With lengthen'd cables, on the raging tide.
Perhaps kind Heaven, with interposing power,
May curb the tempest ere that dreadful hour.
But here ingulf'd and foundering while we stay,
Fate hovers o'er and marks us for her prey.

He said :-Palemon saw, with grief of heart,
The storm prevailing o'er the pilot's art;
In silent terror and distress involved,
He heard their last alternative resolved.
High beat his bosom; with such fear subdued,
Beneath the gloom of some enchanted wood,
Oft in old time the wandering swain explored
The midnight wizards' breathing rites abhorr'd ;
Trembling approach'd their incantations fell,

Not twice nine summers yet matured his thought. And, chill'd with horror, heard the songs of hell.
So oft he bled by fortune's cruel dart,
It fell at last innoxious on his heart.

His mind still shunning care with secret hate,
In patient indolence resign'd to fate.
But now the horrors that around him roll,
Thus roused to action his rekindling soul.
With fix'd attention, pondering in my mind
The dark distresses on each side combined:
While here we linger in the pass of fate,
I see no moment left for sad debate.
For, some decision if we wish to form,
Ere yet our vessel sink beneath the storm,
Her shatter'd state and yon desponding crew
At once suggest what measures to pursue.
The labouring hull already seems half-fill'd
With waters through a hundred leaks distill'd ;
As in a dropsy, wallowing with her freight,
Half-drown'd she lies, a dead inactive weight;
Thus drench'd by every wave, her riven deck
Stripp'd and defenceless, floats a naked wreck;
Her wounded flanks no longer can sustain
These fell invasions of the bursting main.
At every pitch, the o'erwhelming billows bend
Beneath their load, the quivering bowsprit-end.
A fearful warning! since the masts on high
On that support with trembling hope rely.
At either pump our seamen pant for breath,
In dark dismay anticipating death.
Still all our powers th' increasing leak defy :
We sink at sea, no shore, no haven nigh.
One dawn of hope yet breaks athwart the gloom,
To light and save us from the wat'ry tomb,
That bids us shun the death impending here;
Fly from the following blast, and shoreward steer.
'Tis urged indeed, the fury of the gale
Precludes the help of every guiding sail;
And driven before it on the watery waste,
To rocky shores and scenes of death we haste,

Arion saw, with secret anguish moved,
The deep affliction of the friend he loved;
And, all awake to friendship's genial heat,
His bosom felt consenting tumults beat.
Alas! no season this for tender love;
Far hence the music of the myrtle grove !-
With comfort's soothing voice, from hope deceived, !
Palemon's drooping spirit he revived,

For consolation oft, with healing art,
Retunes the jarring numbers of the heart.-
Now had the pilots all the events revolved,
And on their final refuge thus resolved;
When, like the faithful shepherd, who beholds
Some prowling wolf approach his fleecy folds;
To the brave crew, whom racking doubts per-
plex,

The dreadful purpose Albert thus directs:

Unhappy partners in a wayward fate !
Whose gallant spirits now are known too late ;
Ye! who unmoved behold this angry storm
With terrors all the rolling deep deform;
Who, patient in adversity, still bear
The firmest front when greatest ills are near !
The truth, though grievous, I must now reveal,
That long in vain I purposed to conceal.
Ingulf'd, all helps of art we vainly try,
To weather leeward shores, alas! too nigh.
Our crazy bark no longer can abide
The seas that thunder o'er her batter'd side;
And, while the leaks a fatal warning give,
That in this raging sea she cannot live,
One only refuge from despair we find ;
At once to wear and scud before the wind.
Perhaps even then to ruin we may steer;
For broken shores beneath our lee appear;
But that's remote, and instant death is here;
Yet there, by Heaven's assistance we may gain
Some creek or inlet of the Grecian main ;

Or, shelter'd by some rock, at anchor ride,
Till with abating rage the blast subside.

But if, determined by the will of Heaven,
Our helpless bark at last ashore is driven,
These counsels follow'd, from the wat'ry grave
Our floating sailors in the surf may save.

And first let all our axes be secured,
To cut the masts and rigging from aboard.
Then to the quarters bind each plank and oar,
To float between the vessel and the shore.
The longest cordage too must be convey'd
On deck, and to the weather rails belay'd.
So they who haply reach alive the land,
Th' extended lines may fasten on the strand.
Whene'er loud thundering on the leeward shore,
While yet aloof we hear the breakers roar,
Thus for the terrible event prepared,
Brace fore and aft to starboard every yard.
So shall our masts swim lighter on the wave,
And from the broken rocks our seamen save.
Then westward turn the stem, that every mast
May shoreward fall, when from the vessel cast.-
When o'er her side once more the billows bound,
Ascend the rigging till she strikes the ground:
And when you hear aloft the alarming shock
That strikes her bottom on some pointed rock,
The boldest of our sailors must descend,
The dangerous business of the deck to tend;
Then each, secured by some convenient cord,
Should cut the shrouds and rigging from the board.
Let the broad axes next assail each mast!
And booms, and oars, and rafts to leeward cast.
Thus, while the cordage stretch'd ashore may
guide

Our brave companions through the swelling tide,
This floating lumber shall sustain them o'er
The rocky shelves, in safety to the shore.
But as your firmest succour, till the last,
O cling securely on each faithful mast!
Though great the danger, and the task severe,
Yet bow not to the tyranny of fear!
If once that slavish yoke your spirits quell,
Adieu to hope! to life itself farewell!

I know among you some full oft have view'd,
With murd'ring weapons arm'd, a lawless brood,
On England's vile inhuman shore who stand,
The foul reproach and scandal of our land!
To rob the wanderers wreck'd upon the strand.
These, while their savage office they pursue,
Oft wound to death the helpless plunder'd crew,
Who, 'scaped from every horror of the main,
Implored their mercy, but implored in vain.
But dread not this!-a crime to Greece unknown,
Such blood-hounds all her circling shores disown:
Her sons, by barbarous tyranny oppress'd,
Can share affliction with the wretch distress'd:
Their hearts, by cruel fate inur'd to grief,
Oft to the friendless stranger yield relief.
With conscious horror struck, the naval band
Detested for a while their native land:
They cursed the sleeping vengeance of the laws,
That thus forgot her guardian sailors' cause.

Meanwhile the master's voice again they heard, Whom, as with filial duty, all revered.

No more remains-but now a trusty band Must ever at the pump industrious stand; And while with us the rest attend to wear, Two skilful seamen to the helm repair !-O Source of life! our refuge and our stay! Whose voice the warring elements obey, On thy supreme assistance we rely; Thy mercy supplicate, if doom'd to die! Perhaps this storm is sent, with healing breath, From neighbouring shores to scourge disease and

death!

'Tis ours on thine unerring laws to trust: With thee, great Lord!" whatever is, is just."

FROM THE SAME.

The vessel going to pieces-death of Albert. 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. Even 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 ! Nor let this total ruin whirl my brain!

In vain the cords and axes were prepared, For now th' audacious seas insult the 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, Then headlong plunging thunders on the ground, Earth groans! air trembles! and the deeps resound! Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels, And quivering with the wound, in torment, reels. So reels, convulsed with agonising throes, 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, The fated victims shuddering roll their eyes In wild despair, while yet another stroke, With deep 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 ruin o'er the tides.

As o'er the surge the stooping main-mast 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.
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 heave on shore alive;
The rest a speedier end of anguish knew,
And press'd the stony beach, a lifeless crew!
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 inclosed:
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 roll'd,
His out-stretch'd arms the master's legs enfold.-
Sad Albert feels the dissolution near,
And strives in vain his fetter'd limbs to clear;
For death bids every clinching joint adhere.
All-faint, to Heaven he throws his dying eyes,
And, "O protect my wife and child !" he cries:
The gushing streams roll back th'unfinish'd sound!
He gasps! he dies! and tumbles to the ground!

MARK AKENSIDE.

[Born, 1721. Died, 1770.]

Ir may be easy to point out in Akenside a superfluous pomp of expression; yet the character which Pope bestowed on him, "that he was not an every day writer*," is certainly apparent in the decided tone of his moral sentiments, and in his spirited maintenance of great principles. His verse has a sweep of harmony that seems to accord with an emphatic mind. He encountered in his principal poem the more than ordinary difficulties of a didactic subject.

"To paint the finest features of the mind, And to most subtle and mysterious things Give colour, strength, and motion."-Book i. The object of his work was to trace the various pleasures which we receive from nature and art to their respective principles in the human imagination, and to show the connexion of those principles with the moral dignity of man, and the final purposes of his creation. His leading speculative ideas are derived from Plato, Addison, Shaftesbury, and Hutchinson. To Addison he has been accused of being indebted for more than he acknowledged; but surely in plagiarisms from the Spectator it might be taken for granted, that no man could have counted on concealment; and [* While he was yet unknown.]

there are only three passages (I think) in his poem where his obligations to that source are worthy of noticet. Independent of these, it is true that he adopted Addison's threefold division of the sources of the pleasures of the imagination; but in doing so he properly followed a theory which had the advantage of being familiar to the reader; and when he afterwards substituted another, in recasting his poem, he profited nothing by the change. In the purely ethical and didactic parts of his subject he displays a high zeal of classical feeling, and a graceful development of the philosophy of taste. Though his metaphysics may not be always invulnerable, his general ideas of moral truth are lofty and prepossessing. He is peculiarly eloquent in those passages in which

Viz., in his comparison of the Votary of Imagination to a Knight Errant in some enchanted paradise, Pleasures of Imagination, book iii. 1. 507; in his sketch of the village matron, book i. I. 255; and in a passage of book iii. at line 379, beginning "But were not na.ure thus endowed at large." His idea of the final cause of our delight in the vast and illimitable, is the same with one expressed in the Spectator, No. 413 But Addison and he borrowed it in common from the sublime theology of Plato. The leading hint of his well known passage, Say why was man so eminently raised," &c., is avowedly taken from Longinus.

he describes the final causes of our emotions of taste he is equally skilful in delineating the processes of memory and association; and he gives an animated view of Genius collecting her stores for works of excellence. All his readers must recollect with what a happy brilliancy he comes out in the simile of art and nature, dividing our admiration when he compares them to the double appearance of the sun distracting his Persian worshipper. But "non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto." The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the direct representations of life, and its warm realities and affections. We seem to pass in his poem through a gallery of pictured abstractions rather than of pictured things. He reminds us of odours which we enjoy artificially extracted from the flower instead of inhaling them from its natural blossom. It is true that his object was to teach and explain the nature of mind, and that his subject led him necessarily into abstract ideas, but it admitted also of copious scenes, full of solid human interest, to illustrate the philosophy which he taught. Poetry, whatever be its title, should not make us merely contemplate existence, but feel it over again. That descriptive skill which expounds to us the nature of our own emotions, is rather a sedative than a stimulant to enthusiasm. The true poet renovates our emotions, and is not content with explaining them. Even in a philosophical poem on the Imagination, Akenside might have given historical tablets of the power which he delineated; but his illustrations for the most part only consist in general ideas fleetingly personified. There is but one pathetic passage (I think) in the whole poem, namely, that in which he describes the lover embracing the urn of his deceased mistress. On the subject of the passions, in book ii., when our attention evidently expects to be disengaged from abstraction, by spirited draughts illustrative of their influence, how much are we disappointed by the cold and tedious episode of Harmodius's vision, an allegory which is the more intolerable,

because it professes to teach us resignation to the will of Heaven, by a fiction which neither imposes on the fancy nor communicates a moral to the understanding. Under the head of "Beauty" he only personifies Beauty herself, and her image leaves upon the mind but a vague impression of a beautiful woman, who might have been anybody. He introduces indeed some illustrations under the topic of ridicule, but in these his solemn manner overlaying the levity of his subjects unhappily produces a contrast which approaches itself to the ridiculous. In treating of novelty he is rather more descriptive; we have the youth breaking from domestic endearments in quest of knowledge, the sage over his midnight lamp, the virgin at her romance, and the village matron relating her stories of witchcraft. Short and compressed as those sketches are, they are still beautiful glimpses of reality, and it is expressly from observing the relief which they afford to his didactic and declamatory passages, that we are led to wish that he had appealed more frequently to examples from nature. It is disagreeable to add, that unsatisfactory as he is in illustrating the several parts of his theory, he ushers them in with great promises, and closes them with selfcongratulation. He says,

"Thus with a faithful aim have we presumed

Adventurous to delineate nature's form:"

when, in fact, he has delineated very little of it. He raises triumphal arches for the entrance and exit of his subject, and then sends beneath them a procession of a few individual ideas.

He altered the poem in maturer life, but with no accession to its powers of entertainment. Harmodius was indeed dismissed, as well as the philosophy of ridicule; but the episode of Solon was left unfinished, and the whole work made rather more dry and scholastic; and he had even the bad taste, I believe, to mutilate some of those fine passages, which, in their primitive state, are still deservedly admired and popular.

FROM "THE PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION."

BOOK I.

The subject proposed-Difficulty of treating it poetically -The ideas of the Divine mind the origin of every quality pleasing to the imagination-Variety of mental constitutions-The idea of a fine imagination, and the state of the mind in the enjoyment of those pleasures it affords.

WITH what attractive charms this goodly frame
Of Nature touches the consenting hearts
Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
Which beauteous imitation thence derives
To deck the poet's, or the painter's toil ;
My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle Powers
Of Musical Delight! and while I sing
Your gifts, your honours, dance around my strain.

Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast,
Indulgent Fancy! from the fruitful banks

[* Akenside holds a high place among British Poets. He had all the qualities natural and acquired of a great poet. His mind was imbued with classic lore-with lofty conceptions, and that love and knowledge of nature which no book can communicate. His ear was correct, and his blank verse deserves to be studied by all who would excel in this truly English measure. Of his smaller poems the Hymn to the Naiads stands pre-eminent, breathing as it does the very spirit of Callimachus and antiquity. His inscriptions are among the best in our language, and Southey and Wordsworth have profited largely by them. His Odes are tame productions; that to the Earl of Huntingdon has found the most admirers: it is good, but it is not excellent.]

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