Hie thee aloft, my gallant friend! he cries; They cry for aid, and long contend with death. High o'er their heads the rolling billows The helm, bereft of half its vital force, The sickly heav'n, fermenting with its freight, Still vomit, o'er the main the feverish weight: And now, while wing'd with ruin from on high, Thro' the rent cloud the raging lightnings fly, A flash, quick-glancing on the nerves of light, Struck the pale helmsman with eternal night: Now scarce subdu'd the wild unbridl'd course. Quick to th' abandon'd wheel Arion came, roam. So gaz'd young Phæton, with pale dis may, When mounted on the flaming car of day. With rash and impious hand, the stripling tried Th' immortal coursers of the sun to guide. The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh, Seems more impatient o'er the waves to fly: Fate spurs her on. Thus issuing from Advances to the sun some blazing star; THE VESSEL ON THE ROCKS. With mournful look the seamen ey'd the strand, Where death's inexorable jaws expand. Swift from their minds elaps'd all dangers past, As, dumb with terror, they beheld the last. Now, on the trembling shrouds, before, behind, In mute suspense they mount into the wind. bring. The Genius of the deep, on rapid wing, Rodmond, who heard a piteous groan be- The black eventful moment seemed to hind, Touch'd with compassion, gaz'd upon the The fatal Sisters, on the surge before, blind; Yok'd their infernal horses to the prore. And, while around his sad companions The steersmen now receiv'd their last crowd, command He guides th' unhappy victim to the shroud. To wheel the vessel sidelong to the strand: Those who remain their fearful doom O yet confirm my heart, ye powers above! await, Nor longer mourn their lost companions' fate. The heart that bleeds with sorrows all its own, Forgets the pangs of friendship to bemoan. Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon here, With young Arion, on the mast appear; E'en they, amid th' unspeakable distress, In every look distracting thoughts con fess; In every vein the refluent blood congeals, And every bosom fatal terror feels. Enclosed with all the demons of the main, They view'd th'adjacent shore, but view'd in vain. Such torments in the drear abodes of hell, Where sad despair laments with rueful yell, (9) This last tremendous shock of fate to prove. The tottering frame of reason yet sustain ! Nor let this total ruin whirl my brain! In vain the cords and axes were prepared, For every wave now smites the quivering yard; High o'er the ship they throw a horrid shade, And o'er her burst in terrible cascade. Uplifted on the surge, to heaven she flies, Her shatter'd top half buried in the skies; Borne o'er a latent reef, the hull impends, Then thundering on the marble crags descends! Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels, And o'er upheaving surges wounded ree's 2 I. So reels, convulsed with agonizing throws, The bleeding bull beneath the murd❜rer's blows. Again she plunges ! hark! a second shock Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock! Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries, Now on the mountain-wave on high they ride, Then downward plunge beneath th' involving tide; Till one, who seems in agony to strive, The whirling breakers heaves on shore alive; The rest a speedier end of anguish knew, The fated victims shuddering cast their And prest the stony beach, a lifeless crew! eyes In wild despair; while yet another stroke, With strong convulsion, rends the solid oak; Till, like the mine, in whose infernal cell The lurking demons of destruction dwell, At length asunder torn her frame divides, And crashing spreads in ruins o'er the tides. Next, O unhappy Chief! th' eternal doom Of Heaven decreed thee to the briny tomb; What scenes of misery torment thy view! What painful struggles of thy dying crew! Thy perish'd hopes all buried in the flood, O'erspread with corses ! red with human blood! gazed, O were it mine with tuneful Maro's art | So pierced with anguish hoary Priam To wake to sympathy the feeling heart; Like him the smooth and mournful verse to dress In all the pomp of exquisite distress! Then, too severely taught by cruel fate To share in all the perils I relate, When Troy's imperial domes in ruin blazed, While he, severest sorrow doom'd to feel, Expired beneath the victor's murdering steel. Then might I with unrivall'd strains de- Thus with his helpless partners till the last, Sad refuge! Albert hugs the floating mast; His soul could yet sustain the mortal blow, But droops, alas! beneath superior woe; For now soft nature's sympathetic chain Tugs at his yearning heart with powerful strain ; His faithful wife for ever doom'd to mourn For him, alas! who never shall return; To black adversity's approach exposed, With want and hardships unforeseen enclosed; His lovely daughter left without a friend Her innocence to succour and defend ; Some, from the main-yard-arm impetuous By youth and indigence set forth a prey thrown On marble ridges, die without a groan. Three with Palemon on their skill depend, And from the wreck on oars and rafts descend. To lawless guilt, that flatters to betray. While these reflections rack his feeling mind, Rodmond, who hung beside, his grasp resign'd; weed ! And, as the tumbling waters o'er him And, groaning, cling upon th' elusive roll'd, His outstretch'd arms the master's legs Another billow bursts in boundless roar ! enfold. Arion sinks! and Memory views no more! Ha! total night and horror here preside! Sad Albert feels the dissolution near, And strives in vain his fetter'd limbs to My stunn'd ear tingles to the whizzing clear; For death bids every clinching joint adhere, All-faint to Heaven he throws his dying eyes, And "O protect my wife and child!" he cries: tide! It is the funeral knell ! and, gliding near, Methinks the phantoms of the dead appear! But lo! emerging from the watery grave, The gushing streams roll back th' un- Again they float incumbent on the wave! finish'd sound! Again the dismal prospect opens round, He gasps! and sinks amid the vast pro- The wreck, the shores, the dying, and the found. drown'd! Five only left of all the shipwrecked And see! enfeebled by repeated shocks, Those two who scramble on th' adjacent throng, Then climb slow up the beach with hands and feet, In vain, his eyes no more Palemon found. hand, And now a breaking surge, with forceful Still on destruction's brink they shuddering sway, stand, plore, And those yet breathing on the sea-wash'd With pitying sighs their hapless lot deground! Tho' lost to science and the nobler And lead them trembling from the fatal arts, shore. DOUGAL GRAHAM. 1724-1779. ONE of the least known, but not the | Books, that the keenness of his observaleast original, contributors to Scottish literature, was Dougal Graham, the skellat bellman of Glasgow. He had somewhat of the grotesque, both in his physical and mental structure; but as a delineator of life in the humble strata in which he moved, he was unsurpassed. His vein in poetry, as to its manner, hardly rises above doggerel; but it is quite original, and in the wake of his genius, as an observer from his own comical point of view. It is as the writer of the raciest and broadest-humoured of Scottish Chap tion, and the point of his facetious wit, are best displayed; yet his Turnimspike, and Metrical History of the Rebellion of 1745-6, entitle him to be noticed among Scottish poets. The former, which is here given, Scott considered "sufficient to entitle him to immortality." It is one of the first specimens in Scottish literature of the kind of caricature in which Shakespeare drew his Welshmen; and it was afterwards cleverly applied by some of the Whistlebinkians of the west. Dougal was born about 1724, in the |