 | The Two Brothers, and other poems |  |
Dark tempest on the waters: see, they rise
Faster and fiercer round that little bark!
Her mariners with agonizing cries
Betake them to their gods for aid, but dark
Still lay the tempest on the waters: dark
Grew every face, and darker grew the skies:
They strew'd the billows with their Tyrian wares,
Redoubling their wild prayers.
Till lo, quoth one, “Yon strange and fearful man
Calmly hath slumber'd since the storm began.—
What meanest thou, O sleeper! rise and call
Upon thy God to bend His gracious ear,
And think on us in pity, ere we all
Together perish here.”
Then rose the prophet Jonah—calm his mien,
In its stern sadness awfully serene—
One glance he took upon the raging main,
Then slowly scann'd that trembling crew again.
His steady eye disturb'd them; for the change
Wrought in his slumber seem'd unearthly strange.
Surely in that profound, mysterious dream
The Lord his God hath spoken unto him,
Who hitherto had ever seem'd to live
In terror, like a guilty fugitive,
But now, amid the storm stood forth alone
The only fearless one.
“Who art thou?” tremblingly they ask'd, “and what
Thy country and thy race?”—He trembled not,
But prophet-like replied:
“I am a Hebrew, and I bow the knee
To Him who made the heaven and earth and sea:
Fear not, but cast me in the raging tide,
Because for me yon raging billows roar,—
And peace shall tend you to your distant shore.”
Faster and fiercer round that little bark!
Her mariners with agonizing cries
Betake them to their gods for aid, but dark
Still lay the tempest on the waters: dark
Grew every face, and darker grew the skies:
They strew'd the billows with their Tyrian wares,
Redoubling their wild prayers.
Till lo, quoth one, “Yon strange and fearful man
Calmly hath slumber'd since the storm began.—
What meanest thou, O sleeper! rise and call
Upon thy God to bend His gracious ear,
And think on us in pity, ere we all
Together perish here.”
77
In its stern sadness awfully serene—
One glance he took upon the raging main,
Then slowly scann'd that trembling crew again.
His steady eye disturb'd them; for the change
Wrought in his slumber seem'd unearthly strange.
Surely in that profound, mysterious dream
The Lord his God hath spoken unto him,
Who hitherto had ever seem'd to live
In terror, like a guilty fugitive,
But now, amid the storm stood forth alone
The only fearless one.
“Who art thou?” tremblingly they ask'd, “and what
Thy country and thy race?”—He trembled not,
But prophet-like replied:
“I am a Hebrew, and I bow the knee
To Him who made the heaven and earth and sea:
Fear not, but cast me in the raging tide,
Because for me yon raging billows roar,—
And peace shall tend you to your distant shore.”
Oh, unexampled faith, unequall'd trust
Placed in his God by a frail child of dust!
Hosanna! from the caverns of the grave,
Beneath the ocean wave,
Climbs to the throne of God through sea and air,
The voice of confidence and praise and prayer
Hell, who had gloried in the prophet's fall,
And gloated o'er her coming carnival,
Heard it and trembled—dark, mysterious sign
Of that predicted Conqueror Divine,
Whose advent was the token
Of chains and fetters broken,
Who, buried like that seer beneath the earth,
Should mar the triumph of her fiendish mirth,
And wrest the ponderous keys of death away,
And lead captivity his captive prey.
Placed in his God by a frail child of dust!
78
Beneath the ocean wave,
Climbs to the throne of God through sea and air,
The voice of confidence and praise and prayer
Hell, who had gloried in the prophet's fall,
And gloated o'er her coming carnival,
Heard it and trembled—dark, mysterious sign
Of that predicted Conqueror Divine,
Whose advent was the token
Of chains and fetters broken,
Who, buried like that seer beneath the earth,
Should mar the triumph of her fiendish mirth,
And wrest the ponderous keys of death away,
And lead captivity his captive prey.
| The Two Brothers, and other poems | |