The Spirit Of Discovery By Sea - Book The First

Awake a louder and a loftier strain!
  Beloved harp, whose tones have oft beguiled
  My solitary sorrows, when I left
  The scene of happier hours, and wandered far,
  A pale and drooping stranger; I have sat
  (While evening listened to the convent bell)
  On the wild margin of the Rhine, and wooed
  Thy sympathies, "a-weary of the world,"
  And I have found with thee sad fellowship,
  Yet always sweet, whene'er my languid hand 
  Passed carelessly o'er the responsive wires,
  While unambitious of the laurelled meed
  That crowns the gifted bard, I only asked
  Some stealing melodies, the heart might love,
  And a brief sonnet to beguile my tears!
  But I had hope that one day I might wake
  Thy strings to loftier utterance; and now,
  Bidding adieu to glens, and woods, and streams,
  And turning where, magnificent and vast,
  Main Ocean bursts upon my sight, I strike,-- 
  Rapt in the theme on which I long have mused,--
  Strike the loud lyre, and as the blue waves rock,
  Swell to their solemn roar the deepening chords.
  Lift thy indignant billows high, proclaim
  Thy terrors, Spirit of the hoary seas!
  I sing thy dread dominion, amid wrecks,
  And storms, and howling solitudes, to Man
  Submitted: awful shade of Camoens
  Bend from the clouds of heaven.
  By the bold tones 
  Of minstrelsy, that o'er the unknown surge
  (Where never daring sail before was spread)
  Echoed, and startled from his long repose
  The indignant Phantom of the stormy Cape;
  Oh, let me think that in the winds I hear
  Thy animating tones, whilst I pursue
  With ardent hopes, like thee, my venturous way,
  And bid the seas resound my song! And thou,
  Father of Albion's streams, majestic Thames,
  Amid the glittering scene, whose long-drawn wave 
  Goes noiseless, yet with conscious pride, beneath
  The thronging vessels' shadows; nor through scenes
  More fair, the yellow Tagus, or the Nile,
  That ancient river, winds. THOU to the strain
  Shalt haply listen, that records the MIGHT
  Of OCEAN, like a giant at thy feet
  Vanquished, and yielding to thy gentle state
  The ancient sceptre of his dread domain!
  All was one waste of waves, that buried deep
  Earth and its multitudes: the Ark alone, 
  High on the cloudy van of Ararat,
  Rested; for now the death-commissioned storm
  Sinks silent, and the eye of day looks out
  Dim through the haze; while short successive gleams
  Flit o'er the weltering Deluge as it shrinks,
  Or the transparent rain-drops, falling few,
  Distinct and larger glisten. So the Ark
  Rests upon Ararat; but nought around
  Its inmates can behold, save o'er th' expanse
  Of boundless waters, the sun's orient orb 
  Stretching the hull's long shadow, or the moon
  In silence, through the silver-cinctured clouds,
  Sailing as she herself were lost, and left
  In Nature's loneliness!
  But oh, sweet Hope,
  Thou bid'st a tear of holy ecstasy
  Start to their eye-lids, when at night the Dove,
  Weary, returns, and lo! an olive leaf
  Wet in her bill: again she is put forth,
  When the seventh morn shines on the hoar abyss:-- 
  Due evening comes: her wings are heard no more!
  The dawn awakes, not cold and dripping sad,
  But cheered with lovelier sunshine; far away
  The dark-red mountains slow their naked peaks
  Upheave above the waste; Imaus gleams;
  Fume the huge torrents on his desert sides;
  Till at the awful voice of Him who rules
  The storm, the ancient Father and his train
  On the dry land descend.
  Here let us pause. 
  No noise in the vast circuit of the globe
  Is heard; no sound of human stirring: none
  Of pasturing herds, or wandering flocks; nor song
  Of birds that solace the forsaken woods
  From morn till eve; save in that spot that holds
  The sacred Ark: there the glad sounds ascend,
  And Nature listens to the breath of Life.
  The fleet horse bounds, high-neighing to the wind
  That lifts his streaming mane; the heifer lows;
  Loud sings the lark amid the rainbow's hues; 
  The lion lifts him muttering; MAN comes forth--
  He kneels upon the earth--he kisses it;
  And to the GOD who stretched that radiant bow,
  He lifts his trembling transports.
  From one spot
  Alone of earth such sounds ascend. How changed
  The human prospect! when from realm to realm,
  From shore to shore, from isle to furthest isle,
  Flung to the stormy main, man's murmuring race,
  Various and countless as the shells that strew 
  The ocean's winding marge, are spread; from shores
  Sinensian, where the passing proas gleam
  Innumerous 'mid the floating villages:
  To Acapulco west, where laden deep
  With gold and gems rolls the superb galleon,
  Shadowing the hoar Pacific: from the North,
  Where on some snowy promontory's height
  The Lapland wizard beats his drum, and calls
  The spirits of the winds, to th' utmost South,
  Where savage Fuego shoots its cold white peaks, 
  Dreariest of lands, and the poor Pecherais
  Shiver and moan along its waste of snows.
  So stirs the earth; and for the Ark that passed
  Alone and darkling o'er the dread abyss,
  Ten thousand and ten thousand barks are seen
  Fervent and glancing on the friths and sounds;
  From the Bermudian that, with masts inclined,
  Shoots like a dart along; to the tall ship
  That, like a stately swan, in conscious pride
  Breasts beautiful the rising surge, and throws 
  The gathered waters back, and seems to move
  A living thing, along her lucid way
  Streaming in white-winged glory to the sun!
  Some waft the treasures of the east; some bear
  Their country's dark artillery o'er the surge
  Frowning; some in the southern solitudes,
  Bound on discovery of new regions, spread,
  'Mid rocks of driving ice, that crash around,
  Their weather-beaten mainsail; or explore
  Their perilous way from isle to isle, and wind 
  The tender social tie; connecting man,
  Wherever scattered, with his fellow-man.
  How many ages rolled away ere thus,
  From NATURE'S GENERAL WRECK, the world's great scene
  Was tenanted! See from their sad abode,
  At Heaven's dread voice, heard from the solitude,
  As in the dayspring of created things,
  The sad survivors of a buried world
  Come forth; on them, though desolate their seat,
  The sky looks down with smiles; for the broad sun, 
  That to the west slopes his untired career,
  Hangs o'er the water's brim. The aged sire,
  Now rising from his evening sacrifice,
  Amid his offspring stands, and lifts his eyes,
  Moist with a tear, to the bright bow: the fire
  Yet on the altar burns, whose trailing fume
  Goes slowly up, and marks the lucid cope
  Of the soft sky, where distant clouds hang still
  And beautiful. So placid Evening steals
  After the lurid storm, like a sweet form 
  Of fairy following a perturbed shape
  Of giant terror, that in darkness strode.
  Slow sinks the lord of day; the clustering clouds
  More ardent burn; confusion of rich hues,
  Crimson, and gold, and purple, bright, inlay
  Their varied edges; till before the eye,
  As their last lustre fades, small silver stars
  Succeed; and twinkling each in its own sphere,
  Thick as the frost's unnumbered spangles, strew
  The slowly-paling heavens. Tired Nature seems 
  Like one who, struggling long for life, had beat
  The billows, and scarce gained a desert crag,
  O'er-spent, to sink to rest: the tranquil airs
  Whisper repose. Now sunk in sleep reclines
  The Father of the world; then the sole moon
  Mounts high in shadowy beauty; every cloud
  Retires, as in the blue space she moves on
  Amid the fulgent orbs supreme, and looks
  The queen of heaven and earth. Stilly the streams
  Retiring sound; midnight's high hollow vault 
  Faint echoes; stilly sound the distant streams.
  When, hark! a strange and mingled wail, and cries
  As of ten thousand thousand perishing!
  A phantom, 'mid the shadows of the dead,
  Before the holy Patriarch, as he slept,
  Stood terrible:--Dark as a storm it stood
  Of thunder and of winds, like hollow seas
  Remote; meantime a voice was heard: Behold,
  Noah, the foe of thy weak race! my name
  Destruction, whom thy sons in yonder plains 
  Shall worship, and all grim, with mooned horns
  Paint fabling: when the flood from off the earth
  Before it swept the living multitudes,
  I rode amid the hurricane; I heard
  The universal shriek of all that lived.
  In vain they climbed the rocky heights: I struck
  The adamantine mountains, and like dust
  They crumbled in the billowy foam. My hall,
  Deep in the centre of the seas, received
  The victims as they sank! Then, with dark joy, 
  I sat amid ten thousand carcases,
  That weltered at my feet! But THOU and THINE
  Have braved my utmost fury: what remains
  But vengeance, vengeance on thy hated race;--
  And be that sheltering shrine the instrument!
  Thence, taught to stem the wild sea when it roars,
  In after-times to lands remote, where roamed
  The naked man and his wan progeny,
  They, more instructed in the fatal use
  Of arts and arms, shall ply their way; and thou 
  Wouldst bid the great deep cover thee to see
  The sorrows of thy miserable sons:
  But turn, and view in part the truths I speak.
  He said, and vanished with a dismal sound
  Of lamentation from his grisly troop.
  Then saw the just man in his dream what seemed
  A new and savage land: huge forests stretched
  Their world of wood, shading like night the banks
  Of torrent-foaming rivers, many a league
  Wandering and lost in solitudes; green isles 
  Here shone, and scattered huts beneath the shade
  Of branching palms were seen; whilst in the sun
  A naked infant playing, stretched his hand
  To reach a speckled snake, that through the leaves
  Oft darted, or its shining volumes rolled
  Erratic.
  From the woods a sable man
  Came, as from hunting; in his arms he took
  The smiling child, that with the feathers played
  Which nodded on his brow; the sheltering hut 
  Received them, and the cheerful smoke went up
  Above the silent woods.
  Anon was heard
  The sound as of strange thunder, from the mouths
  Of hollow engines, as, with white sails spread,
  Tall vessels, hulled like the great Ark, approached
  The verdant shores: they, in a woody cove
  Safe-stationed, hang their pennants motionless
  Beneath the palms. Meantime, with shouts and song,
  The boat rows hurrying to the land; nor long 
  Ere the great sea for many a league is tinged,
  While corpse on corpse, down the red torrent rolled,
  Floats, and the inmost forests murmur--Blood.
  Now vast savannahs meet the view, where high
  Above the arid grass the serpent lifts
  His tawny crest:--Not far a vessel rides
  Upon the sunny main, and to the shore
  Black savage tribes a mournful captive urge,
  Who looks to heaven with anguish. Him they cast
  Bound in the rank hold of the prison-ship, 
  With many a sad associate in despair,
  Each panting chained to his allotted space;
  And moaning, whilst their wasted eye-balls roll.
  Another scene appears: the naked slave
  Writhes to the bloody lash; but more to view
  Nature forbad, for starting from his dream
  The just Man woke. Shuddering he gazed around;
  He saw the earliest beam of morning shine
  Slant on the hills without; he heard the breath
  Of placid kine, but troubled thoughts and sad 
  Arose. He wandered forth; and now far on,
  By heavy musings led, reached a ravine
  Most mild amid the tempest-riven rocks,
  Through whose dark pass he saw the flood remote
  Gray-spreading, while the mists of morn went up.
  He paused; when on his lonely pathway flashed
  A light, and sounds as of approaching wings
  Instant were heard. A radiant form appeared,
  Celestial, and with heavenly accent said:
  Noah, I come commissioned from above, 
  Where angels move before th' eternal throne
  Of heaven's great King in glory, to dispel
  The mists of darkness from thy sight; for know,
  Not unpermitted of th' Eternal One
  The shadows of thy melancholy dream
  Hung o'er thee slumbering: Mine the task to show
  Futurity's faint scene;--now follow me.
  He said; and up to the unclouded height
  Of that great Eastern mountain, that surveys
  Dim Asia, they ascended. Then his brow 
  The Angel touched, and cleared with whispered charm
  The mortal mist before his eyes.--At once
  (As in the skiey mirage, when the seer
  From lonely Kilda's western summit sees
  A wondrous scene in shadowy vision rise)
  The NETHER WORLD, with seas and shores, appeared
  Submitted to his view: but not as then,
  A melancholy waste, deform and sad;
  But fair as now the green earth spreads, with woods,
  Champaign, and hills, and many winding streams 
  Robed, the magnificent illusion rose.
  He saw in mazy longitude devolved
  The mighty Brahma-Pooter; to the East
  Thibet and China, and the shining sea
  That sweeps the inlets of Japan, and winds
  Amid the Curile and Aleutian isles,
  Pale to the north. Siberia's snowy scenes
  Are spread; Jenisca and the freezing Ob
  Appear, and many a forest's shady track
  Far as the Baltic, and the utmost bounds 
  Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns:
  And lo! great Lebanon--abrupt and dark
  With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow
  Above the midland main, where hang the capes
  Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa,
  Beneath the parching sun, her long domain
  Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source
  Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost
  Amid the torrid sands; and to the south
  Her stormy cape. Beyond the misty main 
  The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold
  Plata, through vaster territory poured;
  And Andes, sweeping the horizon's tract,
  Mightiest of mountains! whose eternal snows
  Feel not the nearer sun; whose umbrage chills
  The murmuring ocean; whose volcanic fires
  A thousand nations view, hung like the moon
  High in the middle waste of heaven; thy range,
  Shading far off the Southern hemisphere,
  A dusky file Titanic. 
  So spread
  Before our great forefather's view the globe
  Appeared; with seas, and shady continents,
  And verdant isles, and mountains lifting dark
  Their forests, and indenting rivers, poured
  In silvery maze. And, Lo! the Angel said,
  These scenes, O Noah, thy posterity
  Shall people; but remote and scattered wide,
  They shall forget their GOD, and see no trace,
  Save dimly, of their Great Original. 
  Rude caves shall be their dwellings: till, with noise
  Of multitudes, imperial cities rise.
  But the Arch Fiend, the foe of GOD and man,
  Shall fling his spells; and, 'mid illusions drear,
  Blear Superstition shall arise, the earth
  Eclipsing.--Deep in caves, vault within vault
  Far winding; or in night of thickest woods,
  Where no bird sings; or 'mid huge circles gray
  Of uncouth stone, her aspect wild, and pale
  As the terrific flame that near her burns, 
  She her mysterious rites, 'mid hymns and cries,
  Shall wake, and to her shapeless idols, vast
  And smeared with blood, or shrines of lust, shall lead
  Her votaries, maddening as she waves her torch,
  With visage more expanded, to the groans
  Of human sacrifice.
  Nor think that love
  And happiness shall dwell in vales remote:
  The naked man shall see the glorious sun,
  And think it but enlightens his poor isle, 
  Hid in the watery waste; cold on his limbs
  The ocean-spray shall beat; his Deities
  Shall be the stars, the thunder, and the winds;
  And if a stranger on his rugged shores
  Be cast, his offered blood shall stain the strand.
  O wretched man! who then shall raise thee up
  From this thy dark estate, forlorn and lost?
  The Patriarch said.
  The Angel answered mild,
  His God, who destined him to noblest ends! 
  But mutual intercourse shall stir at first
  The sunk and grovelling spirit, and from sleep
  The sullen energies of man rouse up,
  As of a slumbering giant. He shall walk
  Sublime amid the works of GOD: the earth
  Shall own his wide dominion; the great sea
  Shall toss in vain its roaring waves; his eye
  Shall scan the bright orbs as they roll above
  Glorious, and his expanding heart shall burn,
  As wide and wider in magnificence 
  The vast scene opens; in the winds and clouds,
  The seas, and circling planets, he shall see
  The shadow of a dread Almighty move.
  Then shall the Dayspring rise, before whose beam
  The darkness of the world is past:--For, hark!
  Seraphs and angel-choirs with symphonies
  Acclaiming of ten thousand golden harps,
  Amid the bursting clouds of heaven revealed,
  At once, in glory jubilant, they sing--
  God the Redeemer liveth! He who took 
  Man's nature on him, and in human shroud
  Veiled his immortal glory! He is risen!
  God the Redeemer liveth! And behold!
  The gates of life and immortality
  Open to all that breathe!
  Oh, might the strains
  But win the world to love; meek Charity
  Should lift her looks and smile; and with faint voice
  The weary pilgrim of the earth exclaim,
  As close his eye-lids--Death, where is thy sting? 
  O Grave, where is thy victory?
  And ye,
  Whom ocean's melancholy wastes divide,
  Who slumber to the sullen surge, awake,
  Break forth into thanksgiving, for the bark
  That rolled upon the desert deep, shall bear
  The tidings of great joy to all that live,
  Tidings of life and light.
  Oh, were those men,
  (The Patriarch raised his drooping looks, and said) 
  Such in my dream I saw, who to the isles
  And peaceful sylvan scenes o'er the wide seas
  Came tilting; then their murderous instruments
  Lifted, that flashed to the indignant sun,
  Whilst the poor native died:--Oh, were those men
  Instructed in the laws of holier love,
  Thou hast displayed?
  The Angel meek replied--
  Call rather fiends of hell those who abuse
  The mercies they receive: that such, indeed, 
  On whom the light of clearer knowledge beams,
  Should wander forth, and for the tender voice
  Of charity should scatter crimes and woe,
  And drench, where'er they pass, the earth with blood,
  Might make ev'n angels weep:
  But the poor tribes
  That groaned and died, deem not them innocent
  As injured; more ensanguined rites and deeds
  Of deepest stain were theirs; and what if God,
  So to approve his justice, and exact 
  Most even retribution, blood for blood,
  Bid forth the Angel of the storm of death!
  Thou saw'st, indeed, the seeming innocence
  Of man the savage; but thou saw'st not all.
  Behold the scene more near! hear the shrill whoop
  Of murderous war! See tribes on neighbour tribes
  Rush howling, their red hatchets wielding high,
  And shouting to their barbarous gods! Behold
  The captive bound, yet vaunting direst hate,
  And mocking his tormentors, while they gash 
  His flesh unshrinking, tear his eyeballs, burn
  His beating breast! Hear the dark temples ring
  To groans and hymns of murderous sacrifice;
  While the stern priest, the rites of horror done,
  With hollow-echoing chaunt lifts up the heart
  Of the last victim 'mid the yelling throng,
  Quivering, and red, and reeking to the sun!
  Reclaimed by gradual intercourse, his heart
  Warmed with new sympathies, the forest-chief
  Shall cast the bleeding hatchet to his gods 
  Of darkness, and one Lord of all adore--
  Maker of heaven and earth.
  Let it suffice,
  He hath permitted EVIL for a while
  To mingle its deep hues and sable shades
  Amid life's fair perspective, as thou saw'st
  Of late the blackening clouds; but in the end
  All these shall roll away, and evening still
  Come smilingly, while the great sun looks down
  On the illumined scene. So Charity 
  Shall smile on all the earth, and Nature's God
  Look down upon his works; and while far off
  The shrieking night-fiends fly, one voice shall rise
  From shore to shore, from isle to furthest isle--
  Glory to God on high, and on earth peace,
  Peace and good-will to men!
  Thou rest in hope,
  And Him with meekness and with trust adore!
  He said, and spreading bright his ampler wing,
  Flew to the heaven of heavens; the meek man bowed
  Adoring, and, with pensive thoughts resigned,
  Bent from the aching height his lonely way.