the high mast bends with hideous creak, and every separate rib in the
huge fabric quivers. Yet the ship on the unmoved waters motionless
struggles, as one, who in a feverish dream nervelessly fleeing o'er a
haunted waste, strives horribly to shun some fiendish shape, with
straining sinews, and convulsive gasp, and faint limbs, magic-stricken.
There is rest, dismal and dreary, on the silent sea: most dismal quiet:
for the viewless might of the keen frost-wind[14] crisps the curling
waves, binding their motion with a clankless chain along the far
horizon. Fruitlessly the imprisoned vessel writhes, until the gale,
lulled in the embrace of evening, leaves its prey, to share the torpor
of the lifeless waste, till earth awaken from her half-year's sleep.

Yet, in those daring hearts, the cheerless voice of boding Fear or dull
Despondency can find no answering tone, whether the storm, round the
snow-rampart[15] howling, interweaves his solemn moans with the
rejoicing shouts of the glad theatre,[16] or simple strains of homely
music leave that warm recess--vibrating far into the tremulous air.
Here, even here are pleasures; those stray[17] forms of joy, which
Nature spreads throughout the world, that he who seeks may find them.
When the Sun, uprising from his long and gloomy trance, beams through
the clearer air, how beautiful, in some obscurest dell[18] of that lone
land, led by the music of an unseen river to see fair flowers, with
light-awakened buds, salute the spring tide. Happily, they smile in the
midst of nakedness, like sweet memories of laughing infancy, beaming
around the desolation of an aged heart.

Oh, that the might of Man's majestic will were self-sufficing! that the
meaner chains which bind him to this dark, material world, before the
lightning glance of Enterprise might fade, as those Philistian bonds,
that fell from him of Zorah. Back--in sorrow back--the ocean-wanderers
turn the unwilling prow; for Nature may not yield, and all is lost, save
gloomy thoughts of unrequited toil in the storm-beaten deep; and
phantasies of gorgeous dreams, for ever desolate; and hopes, which were,
and will not be again.

Yet if the race of Man, as some have deemed[19], form but one mighty
Being, who doth live, yea with intenser life, while kingly Death benumbs
each separate atom with the touch of his pale sceptre--one unchanging
ocean of everchanging waves--one deathless heaven of clouds, which to
their graves roll ceaselessl