The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Fiercelier eight days the tempest roared and raved:
Feeblier each day that God-protected bark
Shuddering in every plank, and panting, clomb
The mountain waves or sank to vales betwixt them:
Meantime the great Sea-Wanderer lay nigh death
In agonies unnamed: old wounds once more
Bled fast at every joint. At times his head
He raised to learn if stood the masts or fell;
Then on his pallet sank with hands hard clasped,
Silent. Full oft the mariners o'erspent
Approached him clamouring ‘Master, give it o'er!
Drift we before the storm to loved Castile!’
Such suppliants still Columbus answered thus
In words unchanged: ‘Good news were that for Powers
Accursed, who clutch dominion long usurped
Lording God's Western world! They hate the Cross
And know that when it lands their realm dissolves.
Theirs is this tempest; and therein they ride!’

The eighth eve had come. While hard the sunset strove
To pierce the on-racing clouds, a cry rang out
Re-echoed from those caravels three hard by,—
The cry of men death-doomed. Columbus rose:
Saint Francis' habit and Saint Francis' cord
Girt him, for on the seas—at times on land—
His great heart joyed to wear that Patriarch's garb
Within whose sacred convent-homes full oft

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When sick he lay with earthly hope deferred,
Hope heavenly rose renewed. The Kings had mocked,
The monks sustained him. Hail, Rabida, hail!
Thy cloisters he had paced; thy pathways hard
Yet sweet with lavender and thyme; had gazed
On the azure waves from Palos' promontory;
Listened its meek Superior's words: ‘Fear nought!
Beyond that beaming ocean lies thy world!
Thou seek'st that world for God's sake, not for man's;
Therefore God grants it thee.’ Next morn he sailed:
That holy monk his great Viaticum
Gave him while yet 'twas dark.

He heard that cry:—
Like warrior-Pontiff or like Prophet old
Treading the leanest of grey Carmel's crags
Such seemed he, steadying with drawn sword his steps.
The sailors round him crouched. Whence came their terror?
That Spectre Demon of ‘The gloomy sea’
Till then by Europe's mariners never kenned
Was circling t'ward them. Evermore in gyres
Nearer it reeled departing to return.
They who in later years beheld that shape
Gave it this name, ‘The Typhon of the waves’
Sole name that yet it bears on eastern seas.
Tower-like its columned stem ascends up-drawing
To heaven huge ocean wastes, a tree of death
Whose crest far-spread blackens the waves like night:
The spell dissolves; it breaks; it falls. The ship
Beneath—whole navies were they linked in one—
Thenceforth are seen no more.

Columbus stood:
Alone of those who gazed he felt no fear:
Like Lucifer ere fallen that Portent flashed;

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Like Lucifer, a rebel judged, it gloomed:
Calmly the Man of God gazed on. He knew
That Spirits of bale and Nature's Powers alike
Bow to God's Will. The man but late had read
The Gospel of St. John. He raised the tome:
His sword pressed down the page. He read, not loud—
And yet with voice that pierced that raging storm:
‘In the beginning was the Word; with God
For evermore He dwelt: He made the worlds.
And lo! the Word of God assumed Man's Flesh.’
He ceased; anon he spake: ‘Whate'er thou art,
Or Spirit or Body or both, hear and obey!
My Christ is God: He wears Man's Flesh in heaven:
We sail to plant Christ's Cross on Pagan shores:
By this, His Sign, I bid thee hence! Depart!’
Then with his sword the Christian Sign he signed
High in the air; and on the deck beneath
Slowly a circle traced. Again he spake:
‘As stand the Hills around Jerusalem
So round His People stands the Lord their God;
The kingdom of the Impure is cut in twain!’
And straight the advancing Portent, thus adjured,
Swerved from his course and curving t'ward the North,
Vanished in cloud.

Once more a cry was heard—
Cry of those Spirits dethroned In distance lost
It died. Then slowly from the North on rolled
The gathered bulk of ocean in one wave
An onward-moving mountain smooth as huge,
And lifted by that wave, lifted not whelmed,
Those worn-out mariners saw again that sun
A long hour set. Sobbing the tempest ceased:
Prone lay the ocean like that sea of glass

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Mingled with fire that spreads before God's throne:
The glory of the Lord was on that wave.
And some there were that westward saw the coast.
Painless that night the Apostolic Man
Slumbered; upon his breast that scroll of him
Whose head had rested on the Master's breast.
All night fair visions soothed him; western Isles
Innumerable, thick-set with temples vast
That hurled their worship to the God Triune;
And, eastward far, his boyhood's hope fulfilled,
Christ's Sepulchre redeemed from Moslem thrall;
Pale Christians from their dungeons issuing free;
And Christian standards crowning Salem's towers.

University of Virginia Library

COLUMBUS AND THE SEA-PORTENT.