[Illustration: The mother strains her infant]
[Illustration: Sad on the jutting eminence he sits]
Unhappy he! who from the first of joys, Society, cut off, is left alone Amid this world of death. Day after day, Sad on the jutting eminence he sits, And views the main that ever toils below; Still fondly forming in the farthest verge, Where the round ether mixes with the wave, Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds. At evening, to the setting sun he turns A mournful eye, and down his dying heart Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up, And hiss continual through the tedious night. Yet here, even here, into these black abodes Of monsters, unappall'd, from stooping Rome, And guilty Cæsar, Liberty retired, Her Cato following through Numidian wilds; Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains And all the green delights Ausonia pours-- When for them she must bend the servile knee, And fawning take the splendid robber's boon.
Nor stop the terrors of these regions here. Commission'd demons oft, angels of wrath, Let loose the raging elements. Breath'd hot From all the boundless furnace of the sky, And the wide glittering waste of burning sand, A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, Son of the desert! even the camel feels, Shot through his wither'd heart, the fiery blast. Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands, Commov'd around, in gathering eddies play; Nearer and nearer still they darkening come, Till, with the general all-involving storm Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise; And by their noonday fount dejected thrown, Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, Beneath descending hills, the caravan Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave Obeys the blast, the aerial tumult swells. In the dread ocean, undulating wide, Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe, The circling Typhon, whirl'd from point to point, Exhausting all the rage of all the sky, And dire Ecnephia reign. Amid the heavens, Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck Compress'd, the mighty tempest brooding dwells Of no regard save to the skillful eye, Fiery and foul, the small prognostic hangs Aloft, or on the promontory's brow Musters its force. A faint deceitful calm, A fluttering gale, the demon sends before, To tempt the spreading sail. Then down at once, Precipitant, descends a mingled mass Of roaring winds, and flame, and rushing floods. In wild amazement fix'd the sailor stands. Art is too slow. By rapid fate oppress'd, His broad-wing'd vessel drinks the whelming tide, Hid in the bosom of the black abyss. With such mad seas the daring Gama fought, For many a day, and many a dreadful night, Incessant, laboring round the _stormy cape_; By bold ambition led, and bolder thirst Of gold. For then, from ancient gloom, emerg'd The rising world of trade: the genius, then, Of navigation, that in hopeless sloth Had slumber'd on the vast Atlantic deep For idle ages, starting, heard at last The Lusitanian prince; who, heaven-inspired, To love of useful glory rous'd mankind, And in unbounded commerce mixed the world.