What we had not the leisure or language to speak,
We should find some more spiritual mode of revealing,
And, between us, should feel just as much in a week
As others would take a millennium in feeling.
WRITTEN
ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,
IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,[1]
LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER, 1804.
See you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along a gloomy bark?
Her sails are full,--though the wind is still,
And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!
Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.
There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost.
Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!
Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark, ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!
[1] This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the
property of Sir Isaac Coffin.
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