Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

48
THE ATTEMPT.
going through the key-hole, and stout gentlemen hopping round the room, exclaiming
“ Oh, mother, mother, I’m a great goose,” are circumstances of such common occur¬
rence, that they neither excite remark on the way home, nor appear particularly
predominant in dreams of the Tea Party.
Pro Yirtute.
& iaM.
Dark gloom’d the night; a tempest fierce
O’er the broad ocean swept,
While high in air the raging winds
Their midnight revels kept.
Nought could be seen on either side
But the white crested foam,
Nought heard for many miles around
But angry billows’ boom.
At length a moonbeam struggling pierced
The murky cloud of night;
And, flinging wide its chilling beams,
Eevealed a mournful sight.
Full on a cliff its radiance fell,
Whose brow the sea o’erhung,
And on a woman standing there
A weirdly gleam it flung.
Like beacon-fires her dark eyes glared,
Lit by unearthly light;
Twin-stars they seem’d, designed to pierce
The deep’ning gloom of night.
Firm on that lofty ledge of rock
She stood amid the storm,
Though fiercely raged the wanton wind
Around her slender form.
And on her bosom cradled lay
A little weeping child,
Whose cries unheeded struggled forth,
Drowned in the tempest wild.
But nought could still the mother’s plaint,
For high above the wind
It rose, the overflow of grief
From that distracted mind.
And wildly, madly rose her voice,
As racked by grief or pain,
And on the midnight air pour’d forth
This sad impassioned strain :—
“Husband, return ! long from thy home
Hast thou a stranger been ;
Ten weary months have passed since I
Thy welcome smile have seen.
Husband, return ! my heart is dead
To all that’s bright and glad;
And in thine absence, e’en our home
Seems desolate and sad.
Thy little infant weeps for thee,
And I in anguish mourn;
0 ! to my fond and yearning heart,
Husband, return ! return !
A bleeding batter’d corse one night
They brought before my door;
They said ’twas thy poor mangled clay
They’d found upon the shore.
’Twas but an idle tale they told,
I knew it could not be,
For that was not the well-loved face
I’ve sighed so long to see.