For now strong 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, By youth and indigence set forth a prey To lawless guilt, that flatters to betray— While these reflections rack his feeling mind, Rodmond, who hung beside, his grasp resign’d; And, as the tumbling waters o’er him roll’d, His outstretched arms the master’s legs enfold: Sad Albert feels their dissolution near, } And strives in vain his fettered limbs to clear, } For death bids every clenching joint adhere: } All faint, to Heaven he throws his dying eyes, And, ‘Oh, protect my wife and child!’ he cries— The gushing streams roll back th’ unfinished sound, He gasps! and sinks amid the vast profound. Five only left of all the shipwrecked throng Yet ride the mast which shoreward drives along; With these Arion still his hold secures, And all assaults of hostile waves endures: O’er the dire prospect as for life he strives, He looks if poor Palemon yet survives— “Ah wherefore, trusting to unequal art, Didst thou, incautious! from the wreck depart! Alas! these rocks all human skill defy; Who strikes them once, beyond relief must die: And now sore wounded, thou perhaps art tost On these, or in some oozy cavern lost:” Thus thought Arion; anxious gazing round In vain, his eyes no more Palemon found.— The demons of destruction hover nigh, And thick their mortal shafts commissioned fly: When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway, Two, next Arion, furious tears away: Hurled on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed! And groaning, cling upon th’ elusive weed; Another billow bursts in boundless roar! Arion sinks! and Memory views no more. Ha! total night and horror here preside, My stunned ear tingles to the whizzing tide; It is their funeral knell! and gliding near Methinks the phantoms of the dead appear; But lo! emerging from the watery grave Again they float incumbent on the wave, Again the dismal prospect opens round, The wreck, the shore, the dying, and the drown’d! And see! enfeebled by repeated shocks, Those two, who scramble on th’ adjacent rocks, Their faithless hold no longer can retain, They sink o’erwhelmed! and never rise again. Two with Arion yet the mast upbore, That now above the ridges reached the shore; Still trembling to descend, they downward gaze With horror pale, and torpid with amaze: The floods recoil! the ground appears below! And life’s faint embers now rekindling glow; Awhile they wait th’ exhausted waves’ retreat,