Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/25

9

Or was it meant as to commend
  Thy new born young bereft?
Could substituted care befriend
  A progeny thus left?

Th' Equator's sun—weak ill-timed brood!
  Has drain'd your fountain dry;
And here no artificial food
  Can nature's store supply.

Poor victim of a torrid clime,
  Where e'en to breathe is pain,
Cut off in all thy vigour's prime,
  Thou'rt gone;—regret is vain.

The wise may think 'tis weak in me,
  To grieve;—so let it pass:
But yet I feel, in losing thee,
  I've lost a friend—Poor Lass.

Sunday, 25th.–Read church service and a sermon as usual. Robert has absented himself on this and the preceding Sunday, without any good or apparent cause; I must remonstrate;–strongly impressed myself with the many mercies of a kind Providence, and the dependence of His creatures on Him for each moment of their existence, every circumstance of their prosperity, and every hope of future happiness, I consider myself involved in the fate of those who have accompanied me, and bound to confirm them, as far as I am able, in religious principles and observances.

Weather fine, but warm and close; a numerous shoal of porpoises have come rushing towards the ship with great violence. "They are just like sheep sporting in a field," said Letty, and it was not a bad simile for their boundings and gambols; and although it was comical enough to see these animals floundering about, I could not help feeling some alarm on the recollection of an observation Captain Cook makes somewhere in his voyages, "that the playing of