And thus while I wandered on ocean's bleak shore,
And surveyed its vast surface, and heard its waves roar
I seemed wrapt in a dream of romantic delight,
And haunted by majesty, glory, and might!
HE sea! the sea! its lonely shore;
Its billows, crested white;
The clouds which flit its bosom d'er,
Or sunbeams dancing bright;
The breakers bursting on the strand,
In thunder to the ear;
The frowning cliff, the silvery sand,—
Each, all to me are dear.
The sea! the sea! oh, tell me not
Of Art's triumphant power!
Its proudest trophies are forgot
In one lone sea-side hour;
Yon giant bark that breasts the tide,
Though beautiful and brave,
Beats not the curlew in its pride,
Which mounts the stormiest wave.
The sea! the sea! the moonlight sea!
How calm its slumbering tides!
A weather-shore upon her lee,
The bark in safety glides:
The steersman keeps his watch alone,
What time his messmates sleep;
While to the strand, in gentlest tone,
The murmuring billows creep.
The sea! the sea! the stormy sea!
How dreadful in its wrath,
When, bounding o'er the billows free,
The bark pursues her path!
A hidden rock arrests her keel;
She founders in the surge;
Her seamen's knell the thunder-peal,
The howling winds their dirge.
The sea! the sea! the treasured sea!.
What mines of wealth untold,
Could human art but set them free,
The hidden coffers hold!
The spoil of navies in their might;
The young, the fair, the brave;
With pearls and gems of lustre bright,—
All sleep beneath thy wave.
The sea! the sea! the glorious sea!
What has the earth so fair,
Of hill or valley, grove or lea,
Which may with it compare?
Oh, I could sit for hours to look
Upon its wide expanse !
And read in its unwritten book
Fresh charms at every glance.
The sea! the sea! the solemn sea!
It has a voice for all;
And even to hearts of happiest glee
May sober thoughts recall.
To me it speaks of distant days,
Of vanished hopes and fears;
Who silently can on it gaze
With eyes undimmed by tears?
The sea! the sea! the changeless sea! Of tears I take my leave
2 fails a smile from ne
71 funk for what I greve:
The wres mi fars I sorrowed o'er
Were tres mi fears of time;
Then in de one of something more
changing and sitüme.
22 on thor deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand feets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with rain-his control
Streps with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth :—there let him lay.
The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;--
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou;-
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm, or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime
The image of Eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone!
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward :—from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
Had trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.
(URN to the watery world! but who to thee
(A wonder yet unviewed) shall paint-the Sea!
Various and vast, sublime in all its forms,
When lulled by zephyrs, or when roused by storms,
Its colours changing, when from clouds and sun
Shades after shades upon the surface run;
Embrowned and horrid now, and now serene,
In limpid blue and evanescent green;
And oft the foggy banks on Ocean lie,
Lift the fair sail, and cheat the experienced eye.-
Be it the summer-noon: a sandy space
The ebbing tide has left upon its place;
Then just the hot and stony beach above,
Light twinkling streams in bright confusion move-
(For heated thus, the warmer air ascends,
And with the cooler in its fall contends);
Then the broad bosom of the Ocean keeps
An equal motion, swelling as it sleeps,
Then slowly sinking; curling to the strand,
Faint, lazy waves o'ercreep the ridgy sand,
Or tap the tarry boat with gentle blow,
And back return in silence, smooth and slow
Ships in the calm seem anchored; for they glide
On the still sea, urged solely by the tide:
Art thou not present, this calm scene before,
Where all beside is pebbly length of shore,
And far as eye can reach it can discern no more?
Yet sometimes comes a ruffling cloud to make
The quiet surface of the Ocean shake;
As an awakened giant with a frown
Might show his wrath, and then to sleep sink down.
IEW now the winter-storm! above, one cloud, Black and unbroken all the skies o'ershroud; The unwieldy porpoise through the day before Had rolled in view of boding men on shore; And sometimes hid, and sometimes showed her form, Dark as the cloud, and furious as the storm.
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