[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.
