Excited from Reading the Obedience of Nature

                to Her Lord in the Vessel on the Sea

                Master, we perish if thou sleep,

                We know not whence to fly;

                The thunder seems to rock the deep,

                Death frowns from all the sky.

                He rose, he ran, and looking out,

                He said, ye seas, be still;

                What art thou, cruel storm, about?

                All silenced at his will.

                Dost thou not know that thou art mine,

                And all thy liquid stores;

                Who ordered first the sun to shine

                And gild thy swelling shores.

                My smile is but the death of harm,

                Whilst riding on the wind,

                My power restrains the thunder's arm,

                Which dies in chains confined.

                ca. 1820s; quoted by Horton in his autobiography,

                The Poetical Works, 1845