THE DEMON OF THE SEA.

BY ELIJAH KELLOGG, JR.

Ah! tell me not of your shady dells
Where the lilies gleam and the fountain wells,
Where the reaper rests when his task is o'er,
And the lake-wave sobs on the verdant shore,
And the rustic maid with a heart all free,
Hies to the well-known trysting-tree;

For I'm the God of the rolling sea,

And the charms of earth are nought to me.
O'er the thundering chime of the breaking surge
On the lightning's wing my course I urge,
On thrones of foam right joyous ride

'Mid the sullen dash of the angry tide.

I hear

ye

tell of music's power,

The rapture of a sigh,

When beauty in her wizard power

Unveils her languid eye.—

Ye never knew the infernal fire,

THE DEMON OF THE SEA.

The withering curse, the scorching ire,
That rages, maddens in the breast

Of him who rules the billow's crest.
Heard ye that last despairing yell
That wailed Creation's funeral knell,
When young and old, the vile, the brave,
Were circled in one common grave?
While on my car of driving foam

By moaning whirlwinds sped,
O'er what was joyous earth I roam
And trample on the dead.

This is the music that my ear
Thrills with stern exstacy to hear!

I love to view some lonely bark,

The sport of storms, the lightning's mark,

Scarce struggling through the freshening wave
That foams and yawns to be her grave!

I saw a son and father fight

For a drifting spar their lives to save;
The son he throttled his father gray,
And tore the spar from his clutch away
Till he sank beneath the wave;
And deemed it were a noble sight.
I saw upon a shattered wreck

All swinging at the tempest's beck,
A mother lone, whose frienzied eye
Wandered in hopeless agony,

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O'er that vast plain where nought was seen

The ocean and the sky between,

And there all buried to the breast

In the hungry surf that round her prest-
With feeble arms, in anguish wild,

High o'er her head she raised her child,
Endured of winds and waves the strife,
To add a unit to its life.

Poor wretch, she deemed it might not be

That the cruel shark his meal should make Of the babe she'd nursed so tenderly,

By her own sweet native lake.

I whelmed that infant in the sea
To add a pang to her misery,

And the wretched mother's frantic yell
Came o'er me like a soothing spell!

-Are ye so haughty in your pride,

To deem of all the earth beside,

That yours are fields and fragrant bowers,
And gold and gems of priceless worth,
And all the glory of the earth?
Ah, mean is all your pageantry

To that proud, fadeless blazonry,
That waves in scathless beauty free,
Beneath the blue, old rolling sea!
For there are flowers that wither not,
And leaves that never fall,—

THE DEMON OF THE

SEA.

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Immortal forms in each wild grot,

Still bright and changeless all.

Decay is not on beauty's bloom,

Nor canker in the rose,
No prescience of a future doom

To mar the sweet repose.
There Proteus' changeful form is seen,

And Triton winds his shell,

While through old Ocean's valleys green,
The tuneful echoes swell.

But though a Demon rightly named,
For terror more than mercy famed,—
Yet Demons e'en respect the power

That nerves the heart in danger's hour.
And when the veteran of a hundred storms,

Whom, many a wild midnight,

I've girded with a thousand startling forms
Of terror and affright,—

When tempests roar, and hell-fiends scream,
The thunders crash, the lightnings gleam,

'Mid biting cold and driving hail
Still grasps the helm, still trims the sail,

Nor deigns to utter coward cries,

But as he lived, so fearless dies,-
Mingles his last faint, bubbling sigh

With the pealing tempest's banner-cry ;—

Then winds are hushed, the billow falls,

Where storms are wont to be,

As I bear him to the untrodden halls

Of the deep unfathomed sea!
Now Triton sends a mournful strain
Through all that vast profound,—

At once a bright immortal train
Come thronging at the sound.

And on a shining, pearly car

They place the honored dust,
And ocean's chargers gently bear
Along the sacred trust,
While far o'er all the glassy plain
By mighty Neptune led,

In sadness move that funeral train,—
Thus Ocean wails her dead!

And now the watch of Life is past,
The shattered hulk is moored at last,
Nor e'en the tempest's thrilling breath
Can wake the 'dull, cold ear of Death.'
No bitter thoughts of home and loved ones dart
Their untold anguish through the seaman's heart.

-Peaceful be thy slumbers, brother,

There's no prouder grave for thee,
Well may pine for thee a mother,

Flower of ocean's chivalry!