The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-09 00:00:00

eturaturr.

POETRY.

LINES,
MN AID OF THE POOR EMIGRANT SUFFERERS BY THE

LATE MELANCHOLY COLLISION ON THE

RIVER AIERSEY

.BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE WANDERER."

For the Li

rpool Standard.

" Yet in the midst of life we are in death.
And Lite's own essence, still, is our own breath.
Ave I very true, my friend ; h ,If here is rotten ;
But, ' whilst there's life there's hope.' Pray, what's the
From the" Exchangearea

price of cotto,

'Tis morning, and the sun o'er Connaught's waters
Sheds down his beams to dance upon his bay :
From Sligo's capital her sons and daughters
In famine-stricken hundred's wend their way—
A homeless multitude : no cheering ray
Of hope to their sad hearts a v:sitant :
Men, pale with grief, and women sob away
Their Misery. Ah ! sorrow c)n implant
itdeeper sting than hunger—in the emigrant.

'Tis noon upon the waters, and the way
Of the deep labouring vessel through the sea
Is clouded with a canopy of spray ;
While hope's far star (•f glad expectancy
Rises, and gleams a ray of fallacy
That drit cs from saddened hearts their mind's alloy,
And finds a home in each poor wanderer's eye.
Then the starved mother clasps her infant hoy,
And dreams of foreign lands with less of tear than joy.

'Tis night upon the waters, and the ship
Still plunging nobly onward through the deep,
Like some proud courser 'neath the smarting whip,
That, panting, urges his impetuous sweep.
Day's widowed bride, dark night ; the starry steep
Of heavens enthroned on ; while the pearl-shed tear
Silvers the dreamer's lids uneasy sleep,
And the cold shudder, from some unknown tear,
Creeps, as some pois'uous snake, o'er ea:.h chilled passenger,

Who has not felt that feeling at the heart
That oft forebodes the future ? when the soul
Claims for itself its own immortal part,
And from its present dwelling place wit roll
The earth-bound clouds that darkly shade the whole;
And then shrink in its prison-house again.
Trembling at danger it cannot control,
And, from its silent chamber In the brain,
send forth that damp-cold awe that bodes of fear and pain

Such were the tremblings thrilled each slumberer's frame
Upon that vessel's breathing flesh-paved deck-
(Ali ! cannot charity respect her name,
And this barbaric intermingling check ?
Let human forms a human likeness take !)
But time has forged his thunderbolts, wid sent
Destruction up:in earth to bring down wreck;
And death, as some grim wolf nn slaui.hter bent,
Drives young and weeping pity into banishment.

It comes ! it comes! Ah, why not pity near,
To stay destruction's steam.propeling breath?
Poor weeping pity sheds the silent tear,
And flies the scene at the approach of death,
Whose footsteps tread the waters underneath;
While iron-fibbed leviathans turmoil,
• And lash the billows to one foam-clad wreath.
Then comes—as armed knights meet on battle's soil—
The thunder of the shock ; the pause—of the recoil.

The crash of the encounter, and the still
And death-like awe around, o'er sea and sky,
That drove the heart's blood backwards, co'd and chill,
Is over; when the heart see cls forth on high
That deep, sad, nameless, melancholy cry,
Which petrifies the hearer; arid, around,
Confusion, horror paints with deeper dye.
'Creation's monarch, pitying, hears the sound,
And death (in mercy sent) the many sufferers found.

The harrowing sight, why dwell upon ; the shore
Received the stricken vessel on its strand;
Where pity lingered, in their wounds to pour
The balm of charity, with open hand;
And ministers, of their own fatherland,
Soothed with religious zeal their agony ;
Bade the racked souls their wavering thoughts expand,
And taught the slaughtered emigrant on h•gh
'o raise his dying breath, and God to deify,

Life and twin sister death go hand in hand.
The one of time, other—eternity,

is eternity's command

,sse: on dull life's calm sea,

ed tr, buffet with futuri

to its shore

till serenii