Long-sweeping, rushing, vast and void, The universe it swallows;And still the dark, devouring tide A typhoon tempest follows.
More slow it rolls; its furious race Sinks to its solemn gliding;The stunning roar, the wind's wild chase, To stillness are subsiding.
And, slowly borne along, a form The shapeless chaos varies;Poised in the eddy to the storm, Before the eye it tarries.
A woman drowned--sunk in the deep, On a long wave reclining;The circling waters' crystal sweep, Like glass, her shape enshrining.
Her pale dead face, to Gilbert turned, Seems as in sleep reposing;A feeble light, now first discerned, The features well disclosing.
No effort from the haunted air The ghastly scene could banish, That hovering wave, arrested there, Rolled--throbbed--but did not vanish.
If Gilbert upward turned his gaze, He saw the ocean-shadow;If he looked down, the endless seas Lay green as summer meadow.
And straight before, the pale corpse lay, Upborne by air or billow, So near, he could have touched the spray That churned around its pillow.
The hollow anguish of the face Had moved a fiend to sorrow;Not death's fixed calm could rase the trace Of suffering's deep-worn furrow.
All moved; a strong returning blast, The mass of waters raising, Bore wave and passive carcase past, While Gilbert yet was gazing.
Deep in her isle-conceiving womb, It seemed the ocean thundered, And soon, by realms of rushing gloom, Were seer and phantom sundered.
Then swept some timbers from a wreck.
On following surges riding;Then sea-weed, in the turbid rack Uptorn, went slowly gliding.
The horrid shade, by slow degrees, A beam of light defeated, And then the roar of raving seas, Fast, far, and faint, retreated.
And all was gone--gone like a mist, Corse, billows, tempest, wreck;Three children close to Gilbert prest And clung around his neck.
Good night! good night! the prattlers said, And kissed their father's cheek;'Twas now the hour their quiet bed And placid rest to seek.
The mother with her offspring goes To hear their evening prayer;She nought of Gilbert's vision knows, And nought of his despair.
Yet, pitying God, abridge the time Of anguish, now his fate!
Though, haply, great has been his crime:
Thy mercy, too, is great.
Gilbert, at length, uplifts his head, Bent for some moments low, And there is neither grief nor dread Upon his subtle brow.
For well can he his feelings task, And well his looks command;His features well his heart can mask, With smiles and smoothness bland.
Gilbert has reasoned with his mind--
He says 'twas all a dream;He strives his inward sight to blind Against truth's inward beam.
He pitied not that shadowy thing, When it was flesh and blood;Nor now can pity's balmy spring Refresh his arid mood.
"And if that dream has spoken truth,"
Thus musingly he says;"If Elinor be dead, in sooth, Such chance the shock repays:
A net was woven round my feet, I scarce could further go;Ere shame had forced a fast retreat, Dishonour brought me low.
"Conceal her, then, deep, silent sea, Give her a secret grave!
She sleeps in peace, and I am free, No longer terror's slave:
And homage still, from all the world, Shall greet my spotless name, Since surges break and waves are curled Above its threatened shame."
