THE BLACK DEATH. 
393 
X. 
Strength, from fear, doth Eric gather. 
Wide the cabin door he threw— 
Lo! the face of his dead father, 
Stern and still, confronts his view ! 
Stately as in life he bore him, 
Seated—motionless and grand; 
On the blotted page before him 
Lingers still the livid hand! 
XI. 
What sad entry was he making. 
When the death-stroke fell at last ? 
“Is it then God’s will, in taking 
All, that I am left the last ? 
I have closed the cabin doorway, 
That I may not see them die:— 
Would our bones might rest in Norway,— 
’Neath our own cool Northern sky ! ” 
XII. 
Then the ghastly log-book told them 
How—in some accursed clime. 
Where the breathless land-swell rolled them, 
Eor an endless age of tune— 
Sudden broke the plague among them, 
’Neath that sullen Tropic sun; 
As if fiery scorpions stung them— 
Died they raving, one by one ! • 
