The Shipwreck, William Falconer

INTRODUCTION.

While jarring interests wake the world to arms,
And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms,
While Albion bids th’ avenging thunder roll
Along her vassal deep from pole to pole;
Sick of the scene, where war with ruthless hand
Spreads desolation o’er the bleeding land;
Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet’s breath
Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of death;
’Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar,
That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore,
Far other themes of deep distress to sing
Than ever trembled from the vocal string;
A scene from dumb Oblivion to restore,
To Fame unknown, and new to epic lore:

Where hostile elements conflicting rise,
And lawless surges swell against the skies,
Till Hope expires, and Peril and Dismay
Wave their black ensigns on the watery way.
Immortal train! who guide the maze of song,
To whom all science, arts, and arms belong,
Who bid the trumpet of eternal Fame
Exalt the warrior’s and the poet’s name,
Or in lamenting elegies express
The varied pang of exquisite distress;
If e’er with trembling hope I fondly strayed
In life’s fair morn beneath your hallowed shade,
To hear the sweetly mournful lute complain,
And melt the heart with ecstasy of pain,
Or listen to the enchanting voice of love,
While all Elysium warbled through the grove;
Oh! by the hollow blast that moans around,
That sweeps the wild harp with a plaintive sound;
By the long surge that foams through yonder cave,
Whose vaults remurmur to the roaring wave;
With living colours give my verse to glow,
The sad memorial of a Tale of Woe!
The fate, in lively sorrow, to deplore
Of wanderers shipwrecked on a leeward shore.

Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine,
Their suppliant feels no genial ray divine
Ah! will they leave Pieria’s happy shore,
To plough the tide where wintery tempests roar?
Or shall a youth approach their hallowed fane,
Stranger to Phœbus, and the tuneful train?
Far from the Muses’ academic grove,
’Twas his the vast and trackless deep to rove;
Alternate change of climates has he known,
And felt the fierce extremes of either zone;
Where polar skies congeal th’ eternal snow,
Or equinoctial suns for ever glow,
Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast,
‘A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,’
From regions where Peruvian billows roar,
To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador;
From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains,
Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains,
To where the Isthmus, laved by adverse tides,
Atlantic and Pacific seas divides:
But while he measured o’er the painful race
In fortune’s wild illimitable chace,
Adversity, companion of his way,
Still o’er the victim hung with iron sway,

Bade new distresses every instant grow,
Marking each change of place with change of woe;
In regions where th’ Almighty’s chastening hand
With livid pestilence afflicts the land,
Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year,
Parent of want and misery severe;
Or where, all-dreadful in th’ embattled line,
The hostile ships in flaming combat join,
Where the torn vessel, wind and waves assail,
Till o’er her crew distress and death prevail.—
Such joyless toils, in early youth endured,
Th’ expanding dawn of mental day obscured,
Each genial passion of the soul oppressed,
And quenched the ardour kindling in his breast:
Then censure not severe the native song,
Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong,
Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear,
Yet truth, and human anguish deign to hear:
No laurel wreaths these lays attempt to claim,
Nor sculptur’d brass to tell the poet’s name.
And lo! the power that wakes th’ eventful song,
Hastes hither from Lethean banks along;
She sweeps the gloom, and, rushing on the sight,
Spreads o’er the kindling scene propitious light;

In her right hand an ample roll appears,
Fraught with long annals of preceding years,
With every wise and noble art of man
Since first the circling hours their course began;
Her left a silver wand on high displayed
Whose magic touch dispels oblivion’s shade:
Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow
Like Juno’s birds, or Iris’ flaming bow,
She sails; and swifter than the course of light
Directs her rapid intellectual flight:
The fugitive ideas she restores,
And calls the wandering thought from Lethe’s shores;
To things long past a second date she gives,
And hoary Time from her fresh youth receives;
Congenial sister of immortal Fame,
She shares her power, and Memory is her name.
O first-born daughter of primeval Time!
By whom transmitted down in every clime
The deeds of ages long elapsed are known,
And blazoned glories spread from zone to zone;
Whose magic breath dispels the mental night,
And o’er th’ obscured idea pours the light;
Say, on what seas, for thou alone canst tell,
What dire mishap a fated ship befel,

Assailed by tempests, girt with hostile shores
Arise! approach! unlock thy treasured stores!
Full on my soul the dreadful scene display,
And give its latent horrors to the day.