Song XXI., pp.270-271.

[Tea-Table Miscellany Contents]

‘TWas when the seas were roaring, 

With hollow blasts of wind, 

A damsel lay deploring, 

All on a rock reclin’d. 

Wide o’er the roaring billows, 

She cast a wishful look; 

Her head was crown’d with willows, 

That trembled o’er the brook. 

– 

Twelve months were gone and over, 

And nine long tedious days; 

Why didst thou ventrous lover, 

Why didst thou trust the seas? 

Cease, cease then, cruel ocean, 

And let my lover rest: 

Ah what’s thy troubled motion, 

To that within my breast? 

– 

The merchant robb’d of treasure, 

Views tempests in despair; 

But what’s the loss of treasure, 

To losing of my dear! 

Shou’d you some coast be laid on, 

Where gold and diamonds grow, 

You’d find a richer maiden, 

But none that loves you so. 

– 

How can they say that nature 

Has nothing made in vain; 

Why then beneath the water 

Do hideous rocks remain? 

No eye these rocks discover, 

That lurk beneath the deep, 

To wreck the wandring lover, 

And leave the maid to weep. 

– 

All melancholly lying, 

Thus wail’d she for her dear, 

Repay’d each blast with sighing, 

Each billow with a tear: 

When o’er the white waves stooping, 

His floating corps she spy’d; 

Then like a lilly drooping, 

She bow’d her head, and dy’d. 

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