Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

One day the whirlwind stripp'd the sails;
The fire devour'd both mast and deck:
And the ocean swallow'd what flames and gales
To the ocean gave—a wreck!

2.

“All's over, at last!” the fishes cried,
“That bewildering portent hath disappear'd.
It was only a dream.” But “Beware!” replied
An agèd Whale, by the rest revered.
“Still something is swimming.” The Whale was right.
'Twas a bottle that floated still intact.
The captain that bottle had cork'd up tight,
And in it a budget of papers pack'd.
On those papers patiently, year by year,
He had written his life's discoveries:

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And, seeing his life's last moment near,
Into the storm and the howling seas
This atom of intellect he flung;
As a brave knight-errant, no help at hand,
Might fling, ere they slew him, his glove among
A den of giants in some wild land.

3.

“Bah!” the fishes thought, bobbing and butting at it,
“What can this mean little monster avail
When the marvellous monster that, dying, begat it
Is dead now, and done with?” But “That,” quoth the Whale,
“Still remains to be seen. Be more cautious, I beg,
For I've a suspicion the thing is an egg,
And am fain to acknowledge I view with mistrust
Such eggs as are laid by no creature knows whom.”

4.

Quite unconscious, meanwhile, of its critics' disgust,
And careless, too, of its unknown doom,
With the documents into the mouth of it thrust
And comprest, like that Genius who crouch'd in the tomb
Where King Solomon pent him till some one fate sent him,
Who freed him, and was not a Solomon, still
The bottle was floating; and floated until

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By chance in a fisherman's net 'twas caught,
And thus at last into notice brought,
With a score or two of its critics small
Who perish'd with it in that day's haul.

5.

For out of his net on the pebbly beach
The fisherman flung it, and broke the glass.
But, after turning them over each
This way and that, without being, alas,
Able to read them, into his jacket
The papers he thrust; having wrapt in one,
For want of aught else wherein to pack it
Ready at hand, a white agate. This stone
He afterwards sold to a purchaser
Who noticed the wrappage, and read it thro';
Was startled by it; made haste to confer
With others, who read and were startled too.
The thing 'gan slowly to make a stir,
And round a re-ëchoing rumour flew,
Which first set many affirming, denying,
And, last of all, set one man trying;
Till the egg was hatch'd by the fervid heat
Of the spirit that o'er it hover'd,
And out of it came a full-fledged fleet
Which a whole new world discover'd.