BY JAMES MONTGOMERY. 183 
Yet with such power of vision look’d they down, 
As though they watch’d the shell-fish slowly gliding 
O’er sunken recks, or climbing trees of coral. 
On indefatigable wing upheld, 
Breath, pulse, existence, seem’d suspended in them ; 
They were as pictures painted on the sky ; 
Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot, 
Like meteors changed from stars to gleams of light- 
ning, 
And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play, 
Their quarry flounder’d, unsuspecting harm, 
With terrible voracity, they plunged 
Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat 
A tempest on the surges with their wings, 
Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal’d them. 
Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey, 
Alive and wriggling in the elastic net, 
Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks ; 
Till, swoln with captures, the unwieldy burthen 
Clogg’d their slow flight, as heavily to land 
These mighty hunters of the deep return‘d. 
There on the cragged cliffs they perch’d at ease, 
Gorging their hapless victims one by one ; 
Then full and weary, side by side, they slept, 
Till evening roused them to the chase again.” 
“ Love found that lonely couple on their isle, 
And soon surrounded them with blithe companions. 
The noble birds, with skill spontaneous, framed 
A nest of reeds among the giant-grass, 
That waved in lights and shadows o’er the soil.” 
