136 The Poets and Nature. 



calls them "thorny" sharks, and another poet "mailed;" 

 and it is a favourite thought in Shelley, Montgomery, 

 Thomson, and Byron among others that they fattened on 

 the slave-trade 



" His jaws horrific arm'd with threefold fate, 

 Here dwells the direful shark. Lured by the scent 

 Of steaming crowds, of rank disease and death, 

 Behold ! he, rushing, cuts the briny flood, 

 Swift as the gale can bear the ship along, 

 And from the partners of that cruel trade, , 

 Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, 

 Demands his share of prey demands themselves. 

 The stormy fates descend ; one death involves 

 Tyrants and slaves ; when straight, their mangled limbs 

 Crushing at once, he dyes the purple seas 

 With gore, and riots in the vengeful meal." Thomson. 



" Myriads of slaves, that perished on the way, 

 From age to age the shark's appointed prey, 

 By livid plagues, by lingering tortures slain, 

 Or headlong plunged alive into the main." Montgomery. 



How it follows ships when any are dying on board, is a 

 world-wide superstition, and finds place more than once in 

 verse. Thus in Barry Cornwall 



"Till dawn we watched the body in its dead and ghastly sleep, 

 And next evening, at sunset, it was slung into the deep ! 

 And never, from that moment save one shudder through the sea 

 Saw we or heard the shark that had followed in our lee." 



"Where 



Is the ship ? On the verge of the wave where it lay, 

 One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray 

 With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle 

 Stain the clear air with sunbows ; the jar, and the rattle 

 Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness, 

 And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains 

 Where the grip of the tiger has wounded the veins, 

 Swollen with rage, strength, and effort ; the whirl and the splash 

 As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash 

 The thin winds and soft waves into thunder ; the screams 

 And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean streams, 

 Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion, 

 A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, 

 The fin-winged tomb of the victor." Shelley. 



