"Generous and brave! when God himself is here, Himself your guide! and yours the high behest, To lift your voice, and bid a world be blest! And can you shrink? to you, to you consigned The glorious privilege to serve mankind! Oh had I perished, when my failing frame Clung to the shattered oar mid wrecks of flame! -Was it for this I lingered life away, The scorn of Folly, and of Fraud the prey; Bowed down my mind, the gift His bounty gave, At courts a suitor, and to slaves a slave? -Yet in His name whom only we should fear, (Tis all, all I shall ask, or you shall hear) Grant but three days"-He spoke not uninspired; And each in silence to his watch retired. At length among us came an unknown Voice! In his own shape shall Death receive you there," TWICE in the zenith blazed the orb of light; And all on deck, kindling to life again, Sent forth their anxious spirits o'er the main. "Oh whence, as wafted from Elysium, whence The sails were furled: with many a melting close, * Ex ligno lucido confectum, et arte mirâ laboratum. P. Martyr. dec. i. 5. + The Simoom. K K (Emblem of Truth divine, whose secret ray Enters the soul, and makes the darkness day!) "PEDRO RODRIGO! there, methought, it shone! There-in the west! and now, alas, 'tis gone!'Twas all a dream! we gaze and gaze in vain! -But mark and speak not, there it comes again! It moves!—what form unseen, what being there With torch-like lustre fires the murky air? His instincts, passions, say, how like our own? Oh! when will day reveal a world unknown?" |