To one, the nearest to the cell,
Alarm'd, Selina wades;
To mark how far the wild wave's swell,
Her darling cove invades.

Behold she kneels! with folded hands,
Kneels on the rugged stone:
Whence now her anxious eye commands,
The cell once deem'd her own!

How keen her anguish to survey,
The tide fill half the cove;
Forth from its seat, with savage sway,
Her Halcyon's nest it drove.

The nest now floats, and from the shore,
The tortur'd parent sprung,
With wildest terror hovers o'er,
And shrieks around her young!

Selina marks the barbarous sea,
The leaky nest divide;
And bold her little friends to free,
She plunges in the tide!

The tender sinking tribe she caught,
But ah! she caught too late!
More rapid, than her generous thought,
Was unrelenting fate.