SCENE IV.
—The same.
Storm. Flight of Sea-Demons, singing.
I.
Fly! fly!
Through the perilous sky,
Spirits of terror and tumult on high!
Even as we go,
Working the woe,
Of all that is hatefully happy below!
Speed! our mission, fierce and fatal,
Is to spoil superior things;
For, at birth, our planets natal
Crown'd with blight our demon wings!
Oh! the joy to rob the treasures,
Hopes of soul and beauty given,
From the race whose purer pleasures,
Are the special care of Heaven!
Joy, that thus, still doom'd to sorrow,
We may happier fortunes blight,
And from woe extremest borrow,
Still the power that yields delight.
To the terror, fiercely wending,
Speed we, till our work is done,
Still destroying, raging, rending,
Till the shadow chokes the sun!
II.
Speed! for the meed
Of merciless deed,
Summons us fiercely with clamors of greed;
While the ship glides
Through the treacherous tides,
Break down her bulwarks and rush through her sides!
These are mortals, wretched creatures!
Yet from doom like ours set free;
Wrought of clay, and yet with features,
Such as make us rage to see!
Such the haughty sovereign presence,
That pursued with storm and flame!
From our homes of power and pleasaunce,
Drove us forth in grief and shame!
Him we dare not face with battle,
Now, as then, with fearless powers,
But his race of God-mark'd cattle,
Yields the proper spoil for ours.
In his likeness made, they languish,
For the wings he hath not given;
And, in trampling on their anguish,
Wage we still our war with Heaven!
III.
Why, oh! why,
Breathing the sky
Orisons still should they offer on high;
Why should they pray,
Creatures of clay,
Whose faith is a fable, whose life is a day!
Mock the mortals with your voices,
Shouting death and hate and hell;
Fill their ears with horrid noises,
Ring for every soul the knell!
Tell them, while the ocean smothers
Life and hope, that, never more,
Shall the loved ones, wives and mothers,
See the forms so dear before!
Show them Death in grimmest aspect,
Cold, corruption, worms, and night;
And depict the penal prospect
Of the future world of blight,
Endless, for the guilt-unshriven,
Fetter'd fast by tyrant powers,
With no hope to be forgiven,
And a doom more dread than ours!
IV.
Lo! where in sight,
Fierce as in fight,
Rising from ocean, our monarch of might;
With the storm for his steed,
He is here at our need,
The dreadful in strife, and the matchless in speed.
Full our legions,—dread battalions,
Sweep we now the ocean plain;
Cower the golden Spanish galleons,
Cower and sink beneath the main!
Vain the skill and power to stay us,
Vain the prayers that hope to spell;
Hate, alone, may soothe or sway us,
And the power that conquers hell!
These we dread not in our mission,
When the victim wrought of clay,
Guilty grown, in his condition,
Yields himself beneath our sway.
Then he forfeits angel keeping,
Which had baffled else our hate;
And the doom of woe and weeping,
Makes him subject to our fate!
CHORUS.
From the regions south, and the regions north,
Mount we, and speed we, and hurry we forth;
From where the sun fails, in the putrid gales,
Launch we afloat on our shadowy sails:
Darkening the sky, oh! how we fly,
Spirits of tumult and terror on high:
The whirlwind we fling abroad on its wing,
And the hurricane speeds to its work, as we sing!
Lo! the skies how they stoop, and the stars how they droop,
While the trailing storms follow our flight in a troop;
As downward we sweep, the black billows leap,
To welcome our flight, with a roar from the deep!
We are here, we are there; in the ocean, the air,
With a breath that is death, and a song that's despair!
Ho! for the master! The sulphur balls go!
How sweet is the shriek of the perishing foe!
Ho! for the master! The red arrows fly,
And burst in the blackness of billow and sky!
Papé Sathanas! We work for thee well!
Aleppé!
There's clucking for triumph in Hell!
Hear'st thou the groans of the victims?—They pray—
Ho! ho! but how vainly!—too late i' the day!
We stifle the prayer, in the breath—and we tear,
The last hope away from the breast of despair!
Ho! for new flights and new victims,—Ho! Ho!
With the tempest for wings, and the lightning we go.
Papé Sathanas! we work for thee well!
Aleppé! There's clucking for triumph in Hell!
