A Sea-Piece

James Montgomery

At nightfall, walking on the cliff-crowned shore,
Where sea and sky were in each other lost;
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I marked one well-moored vessel tempest-tossed.
Sails reefed, helm-lashed, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her deck by billow after billow crossed,
While every moment she might be no more:
Yet firmly anchored on the nether sand.
Like a chained lion ramping at his foes.
Forward and i-earward still she plunged and rose,
Till broke her cable; then she fled to land.
With all the waves in chase; throes following throes;
She 'scaped,—she struck,—she stood upon the strand.
The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had passed; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky;
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye,
Her bow was seaward, all equipt her train.
Yet to the sun she spread her wings in vain,
Like a caged eagle, impotent to fly;
There fixed as if for ever to abide;
Far down the beach had rolled the low neap-tide.
Whose mingling murmur faintly lulled the ear:
"Is this," methought,—"is this the doom of pride.
Checked in the onset of thy brave career,
Ingloriously to rot by piecemeal here?"
Spring-tides returned, and Fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing ocean to its breast;
While waves on waves innumerably prest,
Seemed, with the prancing of their proud array.
Sea-horses, flashed with foam, and snorting spray;
Their power and thunder broke that vessel's rest;
Slowly, with new expanding life possest,
To her own element she glid away;
Buoyant and bounding like the polar whale,
That takes his pastime ; every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the wind unfurled.
While right and left the parted surges curled;—
Go, gallant bark! with such a tide and gale,
I'll pledge thee to a voyage round the world.