The National Republican And Ohio Political Register

Selected Poetry
From the New-England Galaxy.

SEA-SERPENT.

Hail, peerless monster of the deep!
Say, where dost thou thy dwellings keep,
From which thou launchest forth to sweep
The ocean waves so fearlessly?

Art thou that ancient watery hell,
In which old Jonah once did dwell,
The raging tempest winds to quell,
When seas ran high and threateningly?

If so, why leavest thou that shore
On which, with dreadful, whale-like roar,
Thou belchedst him in days of yore,
To serve his God more willingly?

Why not reside in the Levant,
And there thy hungry young ones plant,
Who shall the Grecian islands haunt,
And feed on Turks luxuriously?

Were I thyself, and had thy power,
I quickly through the Straits would scour,
And every Musselman devour—
That Greece might rule victoriously.

I'd coil myself, like Neptune's whip,
Around each Saracenic ship,
And in the flood each prow should dip,
Till surges drenched them mortally.

Ah, could I tame thee as the ass,
I quickly round the world would pass;
Great continents, and ocean's mass
Should all be known familiarly.

I then would whisk round Cuba's land,
And, with a scorpion in my hand,
Would lash each pirate to the strand,
And ships should sail more peacefully.

Ye Gods! how I would frisk around
In rivers, ocean, lake and sound!
Nor wind, nor tide, nor storm should bound
Me, I would skip so merrily.

Snake of the briny restless tide,
That unmolested, free doth ride,
Why wilt thou longer from us hide
Thy bulk and birth mysteriously?

Thou art like him, the great unknown,
Whose name has late so monstrous grown,
And on the world such wonder thrown,
How he can write so endlessly.

Some style him well the mammoth Scott,
All much admire but know not what,
Because his length and breadth have not
As yet been measured perfectly.

As thou to seamen, he appears
Spring, Summer, Autumn, without peers,
To novel readers; but one hears
Only, he writes surprisingly.

But thou, and he, must have two ends,
A fate which all things here attends
Serpent and man, each thing that wends
Through ocean, air, or what may be.

But if the pleasures which we hail
Must with his hid dimension fail—
Heaven grant we ne'er may see his tail,
For that would end the mystery.

HERACLITUS.

* Perhaps the sea-serpent was Nep's whip.