SABLE
ISLAND.
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Dark
Isle of Mourning—aptly art thou named,
For thou hast been the cause
of many a tear;
For deeds of treacherous strife too justly famed,
The Atlantic’s charnel—desolate
and drear;
A thing none love—though wand’ring thousands
fear—
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If
for a moment rests the Muse’s wing
Where through the waves thy sandy wastes appear,
’Tis that she may
one strain of horror sing,
Wild as the dashing waves that tempests o’er
thee fling.
The winds have been thy minstrels—the rent
shrouds
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Of
hapless barks, twanging at dead of night,
Thy fav’rite harp strings—the shriek
of crowds
Clinging around them feebly
in their fright, [Page 40]
The song in which thou long hast had delight,
Dark child of ocean, at
thy feasts of blood;
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When
mangled forms, shown by Heaven’s lurid light,
Rose to thy lip upon the
swelling flood,
While Death, with horrid front, beside thee gloating
stood.
As lurks the hungry tiger for his prey,
Low crouch’d to earth
with well dissembled mien,
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Peace
in his eye—the savage wish to slay
Rankling around his heart—so
thou art seen
Stretch’d harmlessly on ocean’s breast
of green,
When winds are hush’d,
and sleeps the placid wave
Beneath the evening ray—whose glittering sheen
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Gilds
the soft swells thy arid folds that lave,
Unconscious that they cling around a yawning grave.
The fascination of the Siren’s song,
The shadow of the fatal
Upas tree;
The Serpent’s eye that lures the bird along
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To
certain doom—less deadly are than thee
Even in thy hours of calm serenity,
When on thy sands the lazy
seals repose,
And steeds, unbridled, sporting carelessly,
Crop the rank grass that
on thy bosom grows,
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While
round the timid hare his glance of caution throws.
But when thy aspect changes—when the storm
Sweeps o’er the wide
Atlantic’s heaving breast;
When, hurrying on in many a giant form,
The broken waters by the
winds are prest— [Page 41]
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Roaring
like fiends of hell which know no rest,
And guided by the lightning’s
fitful flash;
Who dares look on thee then—in terror drest,
As on thy length’ning
beach the billows dash,
Shaking the heavens themselves with one long deaf’ning
crash.*
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The winds are but thy blood-hounds, that do force
The prey into thy toils;
th’ insidious stream†
That steadily pursues its noiseless course,
Warmed by the glow of many
a tropic beam,
To seas where northern blasts more rudely scream |
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Is
thy perpetual Almoner, and brings
All that to man doth rich and lovely seem,
Earth’s glorious gifts,—its
fair and holy things,
And round thy dreary shores its spoils profusely
flings.
The stateliest stems the Northern forest yields,
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The
richest produce of each Southern shore, [Page
42]
The gathered harvests of a thousand fields,
Earn’d by man’s
sweat—or paid for by his gore.
The splendid robes the cavern’d Monsters wore,
The gold that sparkled in
Potosi’s mine,
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The
perfumed spice the Eastern islands bore,
The gems whose rays like
morning’s sunbeams shine,
All—all—insatiate Isle—these treasures
all are thine.
But what are these, compared with the rich spoils
Of human hearts, with fond
affections stored:
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Of
manly forms, o’ertaken by thy toils—
Of glorious spirits, ’mid
thy sands outpoured.
Thousands who’ve braved War’s desolating
sword,
Who’ve walk’d
through earth’s worst perils undismayed,
Now swell the treasures of thy ample hoard;
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Deep
in thy vaults their whitening bones are laid,
While many a burning tear is to their mem’ries
paid.
And oft—as though you sought to mock man’s
eye—
Thy shifting sands their
treasured spoils disclose:‡
There may we some long-missing wreck descry,
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Some
broken mast, that once so proudly rose
Above the peopled deck; some toy, that shows
The fate of her upon whose
breast it hung,
But who now sleeps in undisturbed repose,
Where by the waves her beauteous
form was flung, |
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May
peace be with her manes—the lovely and the
young.
[Page 43]
Why does the Father, at the dawn of day,
Fly from his feverish couch
and horrid dreams,
And up the mountain side pursue his way,
And turn to gaze upon the
sea, which seems
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Blent
with the heavens—until the gorgeous beams
Of the bright sun each cloud
and wave reveal?
Whence comes the tear that o’er that pale
cheek streams—
As, tired with gazing, on
the earth he kneels,
And pours in prayer to God the anguish that he feels? |
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Why does the matron heave that constant sigh?
Why does she start at every
distant sound?
Her cheerful fire is blazing ’neath her eye,
Her fair and happy children
sporting round,
Appealing to her heart at every bound,
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While
on her lap one rose-lipped babe reclines,
And looks into her face with joy profound.
But yet the mother secretly
repines,
And through a tearful eye her spirit dimly shines.
Why does the maiden shun the giddy throng, |
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And
find no pleasure in the festive hour?
Strange that the mazy dance, and choral song,
O’er one so young
should hold no spell of power.
Why droops her head, as in her fairy bower
Her lute is only tuned to
sorrow’s strain? |
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Is
there no magic in the perfumed flower,
To lure her thoughts from
off the bounding main?
Oh! when shall joy return to that pure breast again?
[Page 44]
Canst thou not read this riddle, gloomy isle?
Say—when shall that
old man behold his boy? |
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When
shall a son’s glad voice—a son’s
bright smile
Wake in that mother’s
heart the throb of joy?
When shall glad thoughts that maiden’s hours
employ?
When shall her lover spring
to her embrace?
Ask of the winds accustomed to destroy— |
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Ask
of the waves which know their resting-place—
And they in thy deep caves their early graves may
trace.
Farewell! dark Isle—the Muse must spread her
wing,
To seek for brighter themes
in scenes more fair,
Too happy if the strain she strove to sing, |
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Shall
warn the sailor of thy deadly snare;
Oh! would the gods but hear her fervent prayer,
The fate of famed Atlantis
should be thine—
No longer crouching in thy dangerous lair,
But sunk far down beneath
the ’whelming brine, |
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| Known
but to History’s page—or in the poet’s
line. [Page 45] |
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* Those who have
not personally witnessed the effects of a storm
upon this place, can form no adequate idea of its
horrors. The reverberated thunder of the sea, when
it strikes this attenuated line of sand, on a front
of thirty miles, is truly appalling, and the vibration
of the Island under its mighty pressure, seems to
indicate that it will separate and be borne away
by the ocean. Haliburton. [back]
† There
is sufficient reason to believe that the Gulf Stream
at 42° 30?, running E.N.E. occasions the waters
of the St Lawrence, running S.S.W., to glide to
the westward. The strength of this current has never
been noticed, and three-fourths of the vessels lost
have been supposed to be to the eastward of the
Island, when in fact, they were in the longitude
of it. Ibid. [back]
‡ After
a gale of wind human skeletons are sometimes exposed
to view, and timber, and pieces of wood, are disinterred
which have been buried for years. Haliburton.
[back]
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