The Poetical Works of Reginald Heber

With heat o'erlabour'd and the length of way,
On Ethan's beach the bands of Israel lay.
'Twas silence all, the sparkling sands along;
Save where the locust trill'd her feeble song,
Or blended soft in drowsy cadence fell
The wave's low whisper or the camel's bell.—
'Twas silence all!—the flocks for shelter fly
Where, waving light, the acacia shadows lie;
Or where, from far, the flattering vapours make
The noon-tide semblance of a misty lake:
While the mute swain, in careless safety spread,
With arms enfolded, and dejected head,
Dreams o'er his wondrous call, his lineage high,
And, late reveal'd, his children's destiny.—
For, not in vain, in thraldom's darkest hour,
Had sped from Amram's sons the word of power;

Nor fail'd the dreadful wand, whose god-like sway
Could lure the locust from her airy way;
With reptile war assail their proud abodes,
And mar the giant pomp of Egypt's Gods.
Oh helpless Gods! who nought avail'd to shield
From fiery rain your Zoan's favour'd field!—
Oh helpless Gods! who saw the curdled blood
Taint the pure lotus of your ancient flood,
And fourfold-night the wondering earth enchain,
While Memnon's orient harp was heard in vain!—
Such musings held the tribes, till now the west
With milder influence on their temples prest;
And that portentous cloud which, all the day,
Hung its dark curtain o'er their weary way,
(A cloud by day, a friendly flame by night,)
Roll'd back its misty veil, and kindled into light!—
Soft fell the eve:—But, ere the day was done,
Tall, waving banners streak'd the level sun;
And wide and dark along the horizon red,
In sandy surge the rising desert spread.—
“Mark, Israel, mark!”—On that strange sight intent,
In breathless terror, every eye was bent;
And busy faction's fast-increasing hum
And female voices shriek, “They come, they come!”

They come, they come! in scintillating show
O'er the dark mass the brazen lances glow;
And sandy clouds in countless shapes combine,
As deepens or extends the long tumultuous line;—
And fancy's keener glance ev'n now may trace
The threatening aspects of each mingled race:
For many a coal-black tribe and cany spear,
The hireling guards of Misraim's throne, were there.
From distant Cush they troop'd, a warrior train,
Siwah's

Oasis.—Sennaar. Meroe.

green isle and Sennaar's marly plain:
On either wing their fiery coursers check
The parch'd and sinewy sons of Amalek:
While close behind, inured to feast on blood,
Deck'd in Behemoth's spoils, the tall Shangalla

The black tribes, whom Bruce considers as the aboriginal Nubians, are so called. For their gigantic stature, and their custom of ornamenting themselves and their houses with the spoils of the elephant, see the account he gives of the person and residence of one of their chiefs, whom he visited on his departure from Ras el Feel.

strode.
'Mid blazing helms and bucklers rough with gold
Saw ye how swift the scythed chariots roll'd?
Lo, these are they whom, lords of Afric's fates,
Old Thebes hath pour'd through all her hundred gates,
Mother of armies!—How the emeralds

The emerald, or whatever the ancients dignified by the name of smaragdus, is said to have been found in great quantities in the mountain now called Gebel Zumrud (the mount of emeralds).

glow'd,
Where, flush'd with power and vengeance, Pharaoh rode!
And stoled in white, those brazen wheels before,
Osiris' ark his swarthy wizards bore;
And still responsive to the trumpet's cry
The priestly sistrum murmur'd—Victory!—

Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's gloom?
Whom come ye forth to combat?—warriors, whom?—
These flocks and herds—this faint and weary train—
Red from the scourge and recent from the chain?—
God of the poor, the poor and friendless save!
Giver and Lord of freedom, help the slave!—
North, south, and west, the sandy whirlwinds fly,
The circling horns of Egypt's chivalry.
On earth's last margin throng the weeping train:
Their cloudy guide moves on:—“And must we swim the main?”
'Mid the light spray their snorting camels stood,
Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood—
He comes—their leader comes?—the man of God
O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads—The circling waves retreat,
In hoarse deep murmurs, from his holy feet;
And the chased surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand and coral hills below.

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass—a steep and slippery dell—
Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurl'd,
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calves' low-roof'd haunt are seen.

Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread;
The beetling waters storm above their head:
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.

Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,
Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night.
Still in their van, along that dreadful road,
Blazed broad and fierce the brandish'd torch of God.
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave
On the long mirror of the rosy wave:
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek, and dance in every eye—
To them alone—for Misraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster-gods in vain:
Clouds heap'd on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods above their line.
Yet on they fare by reckless vengeance led,
And range unconscious through the ocean's bed:
Till midway now—that strange and fiery form
Show'd his dread visage lightening through the storm;
With withering splendour blasted all their might,
And brake their chariot-wheels, and marr'd their coursers' flight,
“Fly, Misraim, fly!”—The ravenous floods they see,
And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity.

“Fly, Misraim, fly!”—From Edom's coral strand
Again the prophet stretch'd his dreadful wand:—
With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep,
And all is waves—a dark and lonely deep—
Yet o'er those lonely waves such murmurs past,
As mortal wailing swell'd the nightly blast:
And strange and sad the whispering breezes bore
The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore.

Oh! welcome came the morn, where Israel stood
In trustless wonder by th' avenging flood!
Oh! welcome came the cheerful morn, to show
The drifted wreck of Zoan's pride below;
The mangled limbs of men—the broken car—
A few sad relics of a nation's war:
Alas, how few!—Then, soft as Elim's well,

It is interesting to observe with what pleasure and minuteness Moses, amid the Arabian wilderness, enumerates the “twelve wells of water,” and the “threescore and ten palm-trees,” of Elim.

The precious tears of new-born freedom fell.
And he, whose harden'd heart alike had borne
The house of bondage and th' oppressor's scorn,
The stubborn slave, by hope's new beams subdued,
In faltering accents sobb'd his gratitude—
Till kindling into warmer zeal, around
The virgin timbrel waked its silver sound:
And in fierce joy, no more by doubt supprest,
The struggling spirit throbb'd in Miriam's breast.

She, with bare arms, and fixing on the sky
The dark transparence of her lucid eye,
Pour'd on the winds of heaven her wild sweet harmony.
“Where now,” she sang, “the tall Egyptian spear?
On's sunlike shield, and Zoan's chariot, where?
Above their ranks the whelming waters spread.
Shout Israel, for the Lord hath triumphed!”—
And every pause between, as Miriam sang,
From tribe to tribe the martial thunder rang,
And loud and far their stormy chorus spread,—
“Shout, Israel, for the Lord hath triumphed!”

University of Virginia Library

THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.