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Ye widows and orphans, bewail not so loud-
Your groans may embitter the feast of the proud;
To win for their store, did the wild battle rave,
"The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave."

Gold! gold! in all ages the curse of mankind,
Thy fetters are forged for the soul and the mind :
The limbs may be free as the wings of a bird,
And the mind be the slave of a look and a word.
To gain thee, men barter eternity's crown,
Yield honor, affection, and lasting renown,

And mingle like foam with life's swift-rushing wave,

"The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave.” BENJAMIN.

THE CORAL GROVE.

DEEP in the wave is a coral grove

Where the purple mullet and gold fish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads it leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,

But in bright and changeful beauty shine

Far down in the green and glassy brine.
The floor is of sand like the mountain drift,

And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow;

From coral rocks the sea-plants lift,

Their boughs, when the tides and the billows flow;

The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there,

And the sands are bright as the stars that glow,

In the motionless fields of upper air;

Then with its waving blade of green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen,

To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter.

There with a slight and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean,

Are bending like corn upon the upland lea.
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,

Is sporting amid those bowers of stone:
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the waves his own.
And when the ship from his fury flies,

Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore.
Then far below in the peaceful sea,

The purple mullet and gold-fish rove;
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,

Through the bended twigs of the coral grove.

PERCIVAL

THE OCEAN.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews; in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal.

roll!

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin his control
Stops with thy shore;-upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own;
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown!

His steps are not upon thy paths- thy fields

Are not a spoil for him,

-thou dost arise,

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields,
For earth's destruction, thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hopes in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth : - there let him lay.

The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war-
These are thy toys; and as the snowy flake
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee -
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage! their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:- - not so thou
Unchangeable save to thy wide waves' play —
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now !

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests! — in all time—
Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime!
The image of eternity! the throne

Of the Invisible ! - Even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made! Each zone

Obeys thee! Thou goest forth, dread! fathomless! alone!

BYRON.

THE STORM.

AGAIN the weather threaten'd, again blew
A gale, and in the fore and after hold
Water appeared; yet, though the people knew

All this, the most were patient, and some bold,
Until the chains and leathers were worn through
Of all our pumps :-a wreck complete she roll'd,
At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
Like human beings' during civil war.

Then came the carpenter at last, with tears

In his rough eyes, and told the captain, he
Could do no more: he was a man in years,

And long had voyaged through many a stormy sea,
And if he wept at length, they were not fears
That made his eye-lids as a woman's be;
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and children.

*

*

*

*

'Twas twilight, for the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters, like a veil,

Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one who hates us, so the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale,

And hopeless eyes, which o'er the deep alone
Gazed, dim and desolate : twelve days had fear
Been their familiar, and now death was here.

At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hen-coops, spars,
And all things for a chance had been cast loose,
That still could keep afloat the struggling tars,

For yet they strove, although of no great use :
There was no light in heaven but a few stars;

The boats put off, o'ercrowded with their crews;
She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
And, going down head foremost - sunk, in short.

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell,

Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave,
Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;

And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell,

And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave,

Like one who grapples with his enemy,

And strives to strangle him before he die.

And first one universal shriek there rush'd
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry,
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

BYRON.

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