Excerpt from The Penance of Roland, a Romance of the Peine Forte of Dure: And Other Poems Drifting down the tide of Time my tiny bark, unguided, passed Toward the Maelstrom of Manhood, puppet both of' wave and blast. But an all-protecting Providence watched the craft, when tempest-test On the Atlantic of Adversity; and the vessel was not lost. Through the distance, when the clouds were lifted by the eddying breeze, Sunny sapphire skies shone on me, with, beneath, Pacific seas. But the gloom came down around me, and the billows rolled and moaned, And the little labouring ark with more than human agony groaned. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.