The next morning at four-bells, the sun was just uprisen, Glowing with very joy to leave his watery prison; The bright cerulean waves with golden scales were crested, Forming the fairest scene on which my eyes had ever rested; The wind was S. S. W., and when they let go the main-top bowline To square the after yards, our good ship stopped her rolling. Madame lay on the quarter-deck sewed up in part of an old spanker, And for this glorious sight of the ocean we had solely to thank her, For to have kept her lying in the cabin would have caused some of us to feel qualmish, And she could not have been kept on deck, as the weather was growing warmish; Therefore it had been resolved in a kind of council, on the captain's motion, At sunrise to commit the old lady to the ocean. She was placed upon a plank, resting upon the taffrail, (the stern railing,) One end of which was secured by a bight of the trysail brailing. The captain read the prayers, somewhat curtailed, but a just proportion, The plank was raised, 'Amen!' the corpse dropped into the ocean. Down in its deep mysterious caves she sunk to sleep with fishes, While a few bubbles rose from her and burst as if in mockery of human wishes. 'Up with your helm; brace round; haul out your bowlines; Clear up the deck; keep her full; coil down your tow-lines!' The ship was on her course, and not a word said to remind us Of the melancholy fact that we had left one of our number behind us. 'Shocking affair!' I remarked to Madame's partner, who looked solemn as a mummy, 'O! horrid!' said he; '_I shall now be compelled to play with a Dummy!_'
'Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.'
Let us put on one side for a few moments the horrid midnight murder of the gracious Duncan. Let us suppose of the buried majesty of Scotland,
----'Upward to Heaven he took his flight, If ever soul ascended!'
Let us for the moment imagine Mrs. Siddons to have been the veritable Lady Macbeth, and acknowledge that never was man more powerfully tempted into evil, nor more deeply punished with his fall from Virtue, than this, the Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor. My concernment in this Essay is neither with his virtue, nor his fall. I neither come to praise, nor bury Cæsar: