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! "Go, if ye will; and, if ye can, rejoice.

Go, with unbidden guests the banquet share.
In his own shape shall Death receive you there."

CANTO VIII.

Land discovered.

TWICE in the zenith blazed the orb of light;
No shade, all sun, insufferably bright!
Then the long line found rest-in coral groves
Silent and dark, where the sca-lion roves :-
And all on deck, kindling to life again,

Sent forth their anxious spirits o'er the main.

66

"Oh whence, as wafted from Elysium, whence
These perfumes, strangers to the raptured sense?
These boughs of gold, and fruits of heavenly hue,
Tinging with vermeil light the billows blue?
And (thrice, thrice blessed is the eye that spied,
The hand that snatched it sparkling in the tide)
Whose cunning carved this vegetable bowl,*
Symbol of social rites, and intercourse of soul?"
Such to their grateful ear the gush of springs,
Who course the ostrich, as away she wings;

*Ex ligno lucido confectum, et arte mirâ laboratum. P. Martyr. dec. 1. 5.

Sons of the desert! who delight to dwell
'Mid kneeling camels round the sacred well;
Who, ere the terrors of his pomp be passed,
Fall to the demon in the redd'ning blast.*

The sails were furled; with many a melting close, Solemn and slow the evening-anthem rose, Rose to the Virgin. "Twas the hour of day, When setting suns o'er summer-seas display A path of glory, opening in the west To golden climes, and islands of the blest; And human voices, on the silent air, Went o'er the waves in songs of gladness there!

Chosen of Men! 'Twas thine, at noon of night, First from the prow to hail the glimmering light; (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!

*The Simoom.