The Ladies' Garland

A correspondent of the London papers, who was on board the steam-boat Comet, when she sunk, on her passage from Inverness to Glasgow, and was fortunate enough to save himself, quotes the following descriptive and spirited lines from Lord Byron's Don Juan, as being strikingly apposite to the fearful catastrophe:

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell.
Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave;
Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave:
And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell,
And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave.
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.

And first one universal shriek there rush'd,
Louder than the ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd,
Save the wild shriek and the remorseless rush
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.