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Chrístõ
chris@pgen.net

 Sick of the scene, where War with ruthless hand
 Spreads desolation o'er the bleeding land;
 Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet's breath
 Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of death; . .

Canto III
. . The Scene Is Extended From That Part Of The Archipelago Which Lies Ten Miles To The Northward Of Falconera, To Cape Colonna In Attica. The Time, About Seven Hours; From One Until Eight In The Morning..

The Argument.
. . V.    Land of Athens appears.
     Helmsman struck blind by lightning.
     Ship laid broadside to the shore.
     Bowsprit, foremast, and main top-mast carried away.
     Albert, Rodmond, Arion, and Palemon strive to save themselves on
       the wreck of the foremast.
     The ship parts asunder.
     Death of Albert and Rodmond.
     Arion reaches the shore.
     Finds Palemon expiring on the beach.
     His dying address to Arion, who is led away by the humane natives.

I.      When, in a barbarous age, with blood defiled,
     The human savage roam'd the gloomy wild
     . . Sent from the shores of light, the Muses came
     The dark and solitary race to tame,
     The war of lawless passions to control,
     To melt in tender sympathy the soul;
. .
      . . In vain the cords and axes were prepared,                 630
     For every wave now smites the quivering yard;

     High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade,
     Then on her burst in terrible cascade;
     Across the founder'd deck o'erwhelming roar,
     And foaming, swelling, bound upon the shore.

     Swift up the mounting billow now she flies,
     Her shatter'd top half-buried in the skies;
     Borne o'er a latent reef the hull impends,
     Then thundering on the marble crags descends:

     Her ponderous bulk the dire concussion feels,               640
     And o'er upheaving surges wounded reels.
     Again she plunges! hark! a second shock
     Bilges the splitting vessel on the rock:

     Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,
     The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes
     In wild despair; while yet another stroke
     With strong convulsion rends the solid oak:

     Ah, Heaven!--behold her crashing ribs divide!
     She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide.
       Oh, were it mine with sacred Maro's art,                  650
     To wake to sympathy the feeling heart;

     Like him, the smooth and mournful verse to dress
     In all the pomp of exquisite distress;
     Then, too severely taught by cruel fate,
     To share in all the perils I relate,

     Then might I, with unrivall'd strains, deplore
     The impervious horrors of a leeward shore.
       As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung,
     Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung:

     Some on a broken crag were struggling cast,                 660
     And there by oozy tangles grappled fast;
     Awhile they bore the o'erwhelming billows' rage,
     Unequal combat with their fate to wage

     Till all benumb'd and feeble they forego
     Their slippery hold, and sink to shades below:
     Some, from the main yard-arm impetuous thrown
     On marble ridges, die without a groan:

     Three, with Palemon, on their skill depend,
     And from the wreck on oars and rafts descend;
     Now on the mountain-wave on high they ride,                 670
     Then downward plunge beneath the involving tide;

     Till one, who seems in agony to strive,
     The whirling breakers heave on shore alive:
     The rest a speedier end of anguish knew,
     And press'd the stony beach--a lifeless crew!
. .  
        . . Now had the Grecians on the beach arrived,
     To aid the helpless few who yet survived:
     While passing, they behold the waves o'erspread
     With shatter'd rafts and corses of the dead;                910

     Three still alive, benumb'd and faint they find,
     In mournful silence on a rock reclined:
     The generous natives, moved with social pain,
     The feeble strangers in their arms sustain;

     With pitying sighs their hapless lot deplore,
     And lead them trembling from the fatal shore.

The Occasional Elegy, In Which The Preceding Narrative Is Concluded. runs for a further 19 verses.

Title: The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer
      With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes

Author: Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

William Falconer was born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. He was the son
of a poor barber in the Netherbow . . While a
mere boy, he went, by his own account, reluctantly on board a Leith
merchant ship, and was afterwards in the Royal Navy.

Before he was
eighteen years of age, Providence supplied him with the materials whence
he was to pile up the monument of his future fame. He became second mate
in the ship 'Britannia', a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was
shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the
poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures,
difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we
find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem.

Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service (one of
his biographers maintains that he was for some time in the 'Ramilies', a
man-of-war, which suffered shipwreck in the Channel) till 1762, when he
published his "Shipwreck." This poem was dedicated to the Duke of York,
who had newly become Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the 'Princess
Amelia', attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Duke was not
a Solomon, but he had sense enough to perceive, that the sailor who
could produce such a poem was no ordinary man, and generous enough to
offer him promotion, if he should leave the merchant service for the
Royal Navy. Falconer, accordingly, was promoted to be a midshipman on
board the 'Royal George' (Sir Edward Hawke's ship); the same, we
believe, which afterwards went down in such a disastrous manner . .

While in the 'Royal George', Falconer contrived to find time for his
poetical studies. Retiring sometimes from his messmates, into a small
space between the cable-trees and the ship's side, he wrote his Ode on
"the Duke of York's Second Departure from England, as Rear-Admiral."
This poem was severely criticised in the 'Critical Review'. It has
certainly much pomp, and thundering sound of language and versification,
but wants the genuine Pindaric inspiration.

At the peace of 1763 the 'Royal George' was paid off, and Falconer
became purser of the 'Glory', frigate of 32 guns. About this time he
married a young lady named Hicks, daughter of a surgeon in
Sheerness-yard--a lady more distinguished by her mental than her
physical qualities. The poet dubbed her in his verses, "Miranda." It is
hinted that he had some difficulty in procuring her consent to marry
him, and was forced to lay regular siege to her in rhyme. At length she
capitulated, and the marriage was eminently happy. She survived her
husband many years; lived at Bath, and enjoyed a comfortable livelihood
on the proceeds of her husband's "Marine Dictionary."

When the 'Glory' was laid up at Chatham, Commissioner Hanway, brother of
the once celebrated Jonas Hanway (whom Dr Johnson so justly chastised
for his diatribe against Tea), showed much interest in the pursuits and
person of our poet. He even ordered the captain's cabin to be fitted up
with every comfort, that Falconer might pursue his studies without
expense, and with all convenience. Here he brought his "Marine
Dictionary" to a conclusion . .

Falconer had now left his cabin study with its many pleasant
accommodations, and become a scribbler of all work in a London garret.
Here his existence ran on for a while in an obscure and probably
miserable current. It is said that Murray, the bookseller, the father of
'the' John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wished to take the poet into
partnership,--upon terms of great advantage,--but that Falconer, for
rea

. .  Falconer had undoubtedly thought the sea a hard and sickening
profession; but latterly found that writing for the booksellers was a
slavery still more abject and unendurable. He resolved once more to
embark upon the "melancholy main." Often as he had hugged its horrors,
laid his hand on its mane, and narrowly escaped its devouring jaws, he
was drawn in again as by the fatal suction of a whirlpool into its
power. Perhaps he had imbibed a passion for the sea. At all events, he
accepted the office of purser to the Aurora frigate, which was going out
to India, and on the 30th of September 1769, he left England for ever.
The Aurora was never heard of more! Some vague rumours, indeed,
prevailed of a contradictory character--that she had been burned--that
she had foundered in the Mozambique Channel--that she had been cast away
on a reef of rocks near Macao--that five persons had been saved from her
wreck, but nothing certain transpired, except that she was lost; and
this fine singer of the sea along with her.

Burns heard of and deplored the loss of the Poet of the Shipwreck. In
one of his letters to Mrs Dunlop, he mentions the fact, and adds the
beautiful words, "He was one of those daring, adventurous spirits which
Scotland beyond any other country is remarkable for producing. Little
does the fond mother think, as she hangs delighted over the sweet little
leech at her bosom, where the poor fellow may hereafter wander, and what
may be his fate. I remember a stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which
speaks feelingly to the heart--

 'Little did my mother think,
 That day she cradled me,
 What land I was to travel on,
 Or what death I should die.'"

Falconer is represented as a bluff, blunt, but cheerful sailor--fond of
amusing his shipmates with acrostics on the names of their
mistresses--with little learning except in seamanship, and what he had
picked up in his travels. His smaller pieces scarcely deserve criticsm.
His whole reputation now reposes on the one pillar of his one poem, "The
Shipwreck."

This poem was greatly overrated when it first appeared. It was by some
critics preferred to Virgil's "AEneid," and compared to the "Odyssey." It
is now, we think, as unjustly depreciated.

And this is the main merit of "The Shipwreck." It has in most of its
descriptive passages a certain rugged strength and truth, which prove at
once the perspicacity and the poetic vision of the author, who, while he
sees all the minute details of his subject, sees also the glory of
imagination shining around them. A ship appears before his view, with
its every spar and yard, clear and distinct as if seen in meridian
sunshine, and yet with a radiance of poetry around it all, as if he were
looking at it by moonlight, or in the magical light of a dream.

We grant, indeed, that sometimes his technical lore rises up, as it
were, and drowns the poetry. What imaginative quality, for example, have
we in the following verses?
 "The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,
 In streaming pendants flying, is unbent;
 With brails refixed, another soon prepared,
 Ascending spreads along beneath the yard;

 To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend,
 And soon their ear-rings and their robans bend.
 That task perform'd, they first the braces slack,
 Then to the chess-tree drag the unwilling tack;

 And, while the lee clue-garnet's lower'd away,
 Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay."

This is mere log-book; and such passages are common in the poem. But
frequently he bathes the web of the shrouds and ship-rigging in rich
ideal gold. Take the following:--

 "With equal sheets restrain'd, the bellying sail
 Spreads a broad concave to the sweeping gale;
 While o'er the foam the ship impetuous flies,
 The helm the attentive timoneer applies:

 As in pursuit along the aerial way,
 With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey,
 Each motion watches of the doubtful chase,
 Obliquely wheeling through the fluid space;

 So, govern'd by the steersman's GLOWING hands,
 The regent helm her motion still commands."

Falconer may in some points be likened to Crabbe. Like him, he excels in
minute and patient painting. Like him he is capable at times of
extracting the imaginative element from the barest and simplest details.
And, like him, he sometimes sets before us, mere dry inventories or
invoices, instead of such poetical catalogues as Homer gives of ships,
and Milton of devils. It is remarkable that Falconer never shines at all
except when he is describing ships or sea scenery.

Let the DNB sum him up:

‘Falconer’s . . reputation rests on these two major works: the Dictionary of the Marine and The Shipwreck. The former is a work of extraordinary care and scientific thoroughness, and it became the standard nautical dictionary until the end of sail. The popularity of The Shipwreck derives from its unique character as a technically detailed seafaring verse narrative, full of pathos and sublimity, from the pen of a professional sailor . .
In the summer of 1769 Falconer agreed to sail with the East India Company commissioners who were appointed for the restoration of order in India, probably with the promise of a secretaryship on arrival. The frigate Aurora sailed on 30 September; contrary to most accounts Falconer was a passenger, not the purser. . .  She was reported in Madagascar in April 1770. Nothing was heard of her again, despite searches by the Morse Indiaman in 1771. Falconer can be presumed to have died in 1770.’ [DNB]

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