"She gazed, she trembled, and though faint her call, It seemed like thunder to confound them all. Their sailor-guests, the boatman and his mate, Had drank and slept, regardless of their state; 'Awake!' they cried aloud! 'Alarm the shore! Shout all, or never shall we reach it more!' Alas! no shout the distant land can reach, No eye behold them from the foggy beach: Again they join in one loud, fearful cry, Then cease, and eager listen for reply; None came--the rising wind blew sadly by. They shout once more, and then they turn aside To see how quickly flowed the coming tide; Between each cry they find the waters steal On their strange prison, and new horrors feel. Foot after foot on the contracted ground The billows fall, and dreadful is the sound; Less and yet less the sinking isle became, And there was weeping, wailing, wrath, and blame." It has been said that Crabbe's poetry is mere description, however accurate, and that he has not a spark of imagination. The charge arises from a false view of the man and his objects. He saw that the world was well supplied with what are poems of the creative faculty, that it was just as destitute of the poetry of truth and reality. He saw human life lie like waste land, as worthless of notice, while our poets and romancers "In trim gardens took their pleasure." He saw the vice, the ignorance, the misery, and he lifted the veil and cried--"Behold your fellow-men! Such are the multitude of your fellow-creatures, among whom you live and move. Do you want to weep over distress? Behold it there, huge, dismal, and excruciating! Do you wish for a sensation? Find it there! Follow the ruined gentleman from his gaming and his dissipation, to his squalid den and his death. Follow the grim savage, who murders his shrieking boy at sea. Follow the poor maiden to her ruin, and the parent weeping and withering under the curse of a depraved child. Go down into the abodes of ignorance, of swarming vice, of folly, and madness--and if you want a lesson, or a moral, there they are by thousands."