University of Virginia Library

Nature and Time were twins. Companions still,
Their unretarded, unreturning flight
They hold together. Time, with one sole aim,
Looks ever onward, like the moon through space,
With beaming forehead, dark and bald behind,
Nor ever lost a moment in his course.
Nature looks all around her, like the sun,
And keeps her works, like his dependent worlds,
In constant motion. She hath never miss'd
One step in her victorious march of change,
For chance she knows not; He who made her, gave
His daughter power o'er all except Himself.
—Power in whate'er she does to do his will,
Behold the true, the royal law of Nature!
Hence failures, hinderances, and devastations
Are turn'd to trophies of exhaustless skill,
That out of ruin brings forth strength and beauty,
Yea, life and immortality from death.

I gazed in consternation on the wreck
Of that fair island, strown with prostrate trees,
The soil plough'd up with horrid inundations,
The surface black with sea-weed, not a glimpse
Of verdure peeping; stems, boughs, foliage, lay
Rent, broken, clotted, perishing in slime.
“How are the mighty fallen!” I exclaim'd;
“Surely the feller hath come up among ye,
And with a stroke invisible hewn down
The growth of centuries in one dark hour!
Is this the end of all perfection? This
The abortive issue of a new creation,
Erewhile so fruitful in abounding joys,
And hopes fulfilling more than all they promised?
Ages to come can but repair this ravage;
The past is lost for ever. Reckless Time
Stays not; astonied Nature stands aghast,
And wrings her hands in silent agony,
Amidst the annihilation of her works!”

Thus raved I; but I wrong'd thee, glorious Nature!
With whom adversity is but transition.
Thou never didst despair, wert never foil'd,
Nor weary with exhaustion, since the day
When, at the word “Let there be light,” light sprang,
And show'd thee rising from primeval darkness,
That fell back like a veil from thy young form,
And Chaos fled before the apparition.

While yet mine eye was mourning o'er the scene,
Nature and Time were working miracles:
The isle was renovated; grass and flowers
Crept quietly around the fallen trees;
A deeper soil embedded them, and o'er
The common sepulchre of all their race
Threw a rich covering of embroider'd turf,
Lovely to look on as the tranquil main,
When, in his noonward track, the unclouded sun
Tints the green waves with every hue of heaven,
More exquisitely brilliant and aërial
Than morn or evening's gaudier pageantry.
Amidst that burial of the mighty dead,
There was a resurrection from the dust
Of lowly plants, impatient for the light,
Long interrupted by o'ershadowing woods,
While in the womb of earth their embryos tarried,
Unfructifying, yet imperishable.
Huge remnants of the forest stood apart,
Like Tadmor's pillars in the wilderness
Startling the traveller 'midst his thoughts of home;
—Bare trunks of broken trees, that gave their heads
To the wind's axe, but would not yield their roots
To the uptearing violence of the floods.
From these a slender race of scions sprang,
Which with their filial arms embraced and shelter'd
The monumental relics of their sires;
But, limited in number, scatter'd wide,
And slow of growth, they overran no more
The Sun's dominions in that open isle.

Meanwhile the sea-fowl, that survived the storm,
Whose rage had fleck'd the waves with shatter'd plumes
And weltering carcases, the prey of sharks,
Came from their fastnesses among the rocks,
And multiplied like clouds when rains are brooding,
Or flowers when clear warm sunshine follows rain.
The inland birds had perish'd, nor again,
By airy voyages from shores unknown,
Was silence broken on the unwooded plains:
Another race of wing'd inhabitants
Ere long possess'd and peopled all the soil.

The sun had sunk where sky and ocean meet,
And each might seem the other: sky below,
With richest garniture of clouds inlaid;
Ocean above, with isles and continents
Illumined from a source no longer seen.
Far in the east, through heaven's intenser blue,
Two brilliant sparks, like sudden stars, appear'd:
Not stars, indeed, but birds of mighty wing,
Retorted neck, and javelin-pointed bill,
That made the air sigh as they cut it through.
They gain'd upon the eye, and, as they came,
Enlarged, grew brighter, and display'd their forms,
Amidst the golden evening; pearly white,
But ruby-tinctured. On the loftiest cliff
They settled, hovering ere they touch'd the ground,
And uttering, in a language of their own,
Yet such as every ear might understand,
And every bosom answer, notes of joy,
And gratulation for that resting-place.
Stately and beautiful they stood, and clapp'd
Their van-broad pinions, streak'd their ruffled plumes,
And ever and anon broke off to gaze,
With yearning pleasure, told in gentle murmurs,
On that strange land their destined home and country.
Night round them threw her brown transparent gloom,
Through which their lonely images yet shone
Like things unearthly, while they bow'd their heads
On their full bosoms, and reposed till morn.
I knew the Pelicans, and cried—“All hail!
Ye future dwellers in the wilderness!”

At early dawn I mark'd them in the sky,
Catching the morning colours on their plumes;
Not in voluptuous pastime revelling there,
Among the rosy clouds, while orient heaven
Flamed like the opening gates of Paradise,
Whence issued forth the Angel of the sun,
And gladden'd Nature with returning day:
—Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd
On ocean's unroll'd volume, from an height
That brought immensity within their scope;
Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,
As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding
O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
On indefatigable wing upheld,
Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them:
They were as pictures painted on the sky;
Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
Like meteors, changed from stars to gleams of lightning,
And struck upon the deep, where in wild play
Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.
With terrible voracity, they plunged
Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
A tempest on the surges with their wings,
Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.
Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
Till, swoln with captures, the unwieldy burden
Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land
These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
There on the cragged cliffs they perch'd at ease,
Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
Till evening roused them to the chase again.

Harsh seems the ordinance, that life by life
Should be sustain'd: and yet, when all must die,
And be like water spilt upon the ground,
Which none can gather up, the speediest fate,
Though violent and terrible, is best.
O! with what horrors would creation groan,—
What agonies would ever be before us,
Famine and pestilence, disease, despair,
Anguish and pain in every hideous shape,—
Had all to wait the slow decay of nature!
Life were a martyrdom of sympathy;
Death, lingering, raging, writhing, shrieking torture;
The grave would be abolish'd; this gay world
A valley of dry bones, a Golgotha,
In which the living stumbled o'er the dead,
Till they could fall no more, and blind perdition
Swept frail mortality away for ever.
'Twas wisdom, mercy, goodness, that ordain'd
Life in such infinite profusion,—Death
So sure, so prompt, so multiform to those,
That never sinn'd, that know not guilt, that fear
No wrath to come, and have no heaven to lose.

Love found that lonely couple on their isle,
And soon surrounded them with blithe companions.
The noble birds, with skill spontaneous, framed
A nest of reeds among the giant-grass,
That waved in lights and shadows o'er the soil.
There, in sweet thraldom, yet unweening why,
The patient dam, who ne'er till now had known
Parental instinct, brooded o'er her eggs,
Long ere she found the curious secret out
That life was hatching in their brittle shells.
Then, from a wild rapacious bird of prey,
Tamed by the kindly process, she became
That gentlest of all living things—a mother;
Gentlest while yearning o'er her naked young,
Fiercest when stirr'd by anger to defend them.
Her mate himself the softening power confess'd,
Forgot his sloth, restrain'd his appetite,
And ranged the sky and fish'd the stream for her;
Or when o'erwearied nature forced her off
To shake her torpid feathers in the breeze,
And bathe her bosom in the cooling flood,
He took her place, and felt through every nerve,
While the plump nestlings throbb'd against his heart,
The tenderness that makes the vulture mild;
Yea, half unwillingly his post resign'd,
When, home-sick with the absence of an hour,
She hurried back, and drove him from her seat
With pecking bill and cry of fond distress,
Answer'd by him with murmurs of delight,
Whose gutturals harsh to her were love's own music.
Then, settling down, like foam upon the wave,
White, flickering, effervescent, soon subsiding,
Her ruffled pinions smoothly she composed;
And, while beneath the comfort of her wings,
Her crowded progeny quite fill'd the nest:
The halcyon sleeps not sounder, when the wind
Is breathless, and the sea without a curl,
—Nor dreams the halcyon of serener days,
Or nights more beautiful with silent stars,
Than, in that hour, the mother Pelican,
When the warm tumults of affection sunk
Into calm sleep, and dreams of what they were,
Dreams more delicious than reality.
—He sentinel beside her stood, and watch'd
With jealous eye the raven in the clouds,
And the rank sea-mews wheeling round the cliffs.
Woe to the reptile then that ventured nigh;
The snap of his tremendous bill was like
Death's scythe, down-cutting every thing it struck.
The heedless lizard, in his gambols, peep'd
Upon the guarded nest, from out the flowers,
But paid the instant forfeit of his life;
Nor could the serpent's subtilty elude
Capture, when gliding by nor in defence
Might his malignant fangs and venom save him.

Erelong the thriving brood outgrew their cradle,
Ran through the grass, and dabbled in the pools;
No sooner denizens of earth, than made
Free both of air and water: day by day,
New lessons, exercises, and amusements
Employ'd the old to teach, the young to learn.
Now floating on the blue lagoon behold them;
The Sire and Dam in swan-like beauty steering,
Their Cygnets following through the foamy wake,
Picking the leaves of plants, pursuing insects,
Or catching at the bubbles as they broke:
Till on some minor fry, in reedy shallows,
With flapping pinions and unsparing beaks,
The well-taught scholars plied their double art,
To fish in troubled waters, and secure
The petty captives in their maiden pouches;
Then hurry with their banquet to the shore,
With feet, wings, breast, half-swimming and half-flying.
But when their pens grew strong to fight the storm,
And buffet with the breakers on the reef,
The Parents put them to severer proof:
On beetling rocks the little ones were marshall'd:
There, by endearments, stripes, example, urged
To try the void convexity of heaven,
And plough the ocean's horizontal field.
Timorous at first, they flutter'd round the verge,
Balanced and furl'd their hesitating wings,
Then put them forth again with steadier aim;
Now, gaining courage as they felt the wind
Dilate their feathers, fill their airy frames
With buoyancy that bore them from their feet,
They yielded all their burden to the breeze,
And sail'd and soar'd where'er their guardians led:
Ascending, hovering, wheeling, or alighting,
They search'd the deep in quest of nobler game
Than yet their inexperience had encounter'd;
With these they battled in that element
Where wings or fins were equally at home,
Till, conquerors in many a desperate strife,
They dragg'd their spoils to land, and gorged at leisure.

Thus perfected in all the arts of life
That simple Pelicans require,—save one,
Which mother-bird did never teach her daughter,
—The inimitable art to build a nest;
Love, for his own delightful school, reserving
That mystery which novice never fail'd
To learn infallibly when taught by him:
—Hence that small masterpiece of Nature's art,
Still unimpair'd, still unimproved, remains
The same in site, material, shape, and texture.
While every kind a different structure frames,
All build alike of each peculiar kind:
The nightingale, that dwelt in Adam's bower,
And pour'd her stream of music through his dreams;
The soaring lark, that led the eye of Eve
Into the clouds, her thoughts into the heaven
Of heavens, where lark nor eye can penetrate;
The dove, that perch'd upon the Tree of Life,
And made her bed among its thickest leaves;
All the wing'd habitants of Paradise,
Whose songs once mingled with the songs of Angels,
Wove their first nests as curiously and well
As the wood-minstrels in our evil day,
After the labours of six thousand years,
In which their ancestors have fail'd to add,
To alter, or diminish, any thing
In that, of which Love only knows the secret,
And teaches every mother for herself,
Without the power to impart it to her offspring:
—Thus, perfected in all the arts of life
That simple Pelicans require, save this,
Those Parents drove their young away: the young
Gaily forsook their parents. Soon enthrall'd
With love-alliances among themselves,
They built their nests, as happy instinct wrought
Within their bosoms, wakening powers unknown,
Till sweet necessity was laid upon them:
They bred, and rear'd their little families,
As they were train'd and disciplined before.

Thus wings were multiplied from year to year;
And here the patriarch-twain, in good old age,
Resign'd their breath beside that ancient nest
In which themselves had nursed a hundred broods,
The isle was peopled with their progeny.