Mid the light spray their snorting camels stood,
Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood.
He comes-their leader comes-the man of God
O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads; the circling waves retreat,
In hoarse, deep murmurs, from his holy feet;
And the chased surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sands and coral hills below.
With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass, a steep and slippery dell ;
Round them arise, in pristine chaos hurl'd,
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green;
And caves, the sea-calf's low-roof'd haunts are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread,
The seething waters storm above their head;
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.
Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,
Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night;
Still in the van along that dreadful road,
Blazed broad and fierce the brandish'd torch of God;
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave
On the long mirror of the rosy wave;
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek, and dance in every eye-
To them alone:-for Mizraim's wizard train
Invoke for light their monster-gods in vain:
Clouds heap'd on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods along their line.
Yet on they go, by reckless vengeance led,
And
range unconscious through the ocean's bed,
Till, midway now, that strange and fiery Form
Show'd his dread visage, light'ning through the storm,
With withering splendour blasted all their might,
And brake their chariot wheels, and marr❜d their coursers' flight.
"Fly, Mizraim, fly!" The rav'nous floods they see And fiercer than the floods, the Deity!
"Fly, Mizraim, fly!" From Edom's coral strand,
Again the Prophet stretch'd his dreadful wand;
With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep,
And all its waves-a dark and lonely deep;
Yet o'er those lonely waves such murmurs past,
As mortal wailing swell'd the nightly blast,
And strange and sad the whispering surges bore
The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore.
O welcome came the morn, where Israel stood,
In trustless wonder, by the avenging flood!
O welcome came the cheerful morn, to show
The drifted wreck of Iran's pride below!
The mingled limbs of men, the broken car,
A few sad relics of a nation's war:
Alas, how few! Then, soft as Elim's well,
The precious tears of new-born Freedom tell-
And he whose harden'd heart alike had borne
The hours of bondage and th' oppressor's scorn,
The stubborn slave by Hope's new beams subdued,
In faltering accents sobb'd his gratitude.
Till, kindling into warmer zeal around,
The virgin timbrel waked its silver sound;
And in fierce joy, no more by doubt supprest,
The struggling spirit throbb'd in Miriam's breast.
She, with bare arms, and fixing on the sky
The dark transparence of her lucid eye,
Pour'd on the winds of heaven her wild sweet har
"Where now," she sang, "the tall Egyptian spear?
On's sun like shield, and Iran's chariot, where?
Above their ranks the whelming waters spread:
Shout, Israel! for the Lord hath triumphed !"
And every pause between, as Miriam sang,
From tribe to tribe the martial thunder rang;
And loud and far the stormy chorus spread-
"Shout, Israel! for the Lord hath triumphed!"
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