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POEMS OF THE SEA.

THE SEA.

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD."

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, - roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin, - his control Stops 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.

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It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea, I 'm on the sea,

I am where I would ever be,

With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.

If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, O, how I love to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest wind doth blow!
I never was on the dull, tame shore
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest, -
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;

The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,
As welcomed to life the ocean child.

I have lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a rover's life,
With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change :
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!

BARRY CORNWALL.

A HYMN OF THE SEA.

THE sea is mighty, but a mightier sways
His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have

scooped

In acclamation. I behold the ships
Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle,
Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening
home

From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze
That bears them, with the riches of the land,
And treasure of dear lives, till, in the port,
The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail.

But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall
face

The blast that wakes the fury of the sea?
O God! thy justice makes the world turn pale,
When on the armed fleet, that royally
Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite
Some city or invade some thoughtless realm,
Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks
Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the

sails

Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts
Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks
Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf,
Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed
In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed
By whirlpools or dashed dead upon the rocks.
Then stand the nations still with awe, and
pause

A moment from the bloody work of war.

These restless surges eat away the shores
Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain
Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down,
And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets
Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar
In the green chambers of the middle sea,
Where broadest spread the waters and the line
Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work,
Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm
To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age,
He builds beneath the waters, till, at last,
His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check
The long wave rolling from the southern pole
To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires,

His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy That smoulder under ocean, heave on high

breath,
That moved in the beginning o'er his face,
Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves
To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall.
Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up,
As at the first, to water the great earth,
And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms
Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind,
And in the dropping shower with gladness hear
Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth
Over the boundless blue, where joyously
The bright crests of innumerable waves
Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands
Of a great multitude are upward flung

The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks,
A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird.
The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts
With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush;
sweet airs

Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flow

ers,

Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look
On thy creation and pronounce it good.
Its valleys, glorious with their summer green,
Praise thee in silent beauty; and its woods
Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join
The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE SEA.

BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious;
Mild, majestic, foaming, free,

Over time itself victorious,
Image of eternity!

Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee,
See thy surface ebb and flow,
Yet attempt not to explore thee
In thy soundless depths below.

Whether morning's splendors steep thee
With the rainbow's glowing grace,
Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee,
'T is but for a moment's space.

Earth, her valleys and her mountains,
Mortal man's behests obey;
The unfathomable fountains

Scoff his search and scorn his sway.

Such art thou, stupendous ocean!
But, if overwhelmed by thee,
Can we think, without emotion,
What must thy Creator be?

O gardens of Eden! in vain
Placed far on the fathomless main,
Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth,
When pure was her heart and unbroken her truth.

But now the fair rivers of Paradise wind
Through countries and kingdoms o'erthrown;
Where the giant of tyranny crushes mankind,
Where he reigns, and will soon reign alone;
Forwide and more wide, o'er the sunbeaming zone
He stretches his hundred-fold arms,
Despoiling, destroying its charms;
Beneath his broad footstep the Ganges is dry,
And the mountains recoil from the flash of his eye.

Thus the pestilent Upas, the demon of trees,
Its boughs o'er the wilderness spreads,
And with livid contagion polluting the breeze,
Its mildewing influence sheds ;

The birdson the wing, and the flowers in their beds,
Are slain by its venomous breath,
That darkens the noonday with death,
And pale ghosts of travellers wander around,
While their mouldering skeletons whiten the

ground.

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Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,

To ravage the uttermost earth,

While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail, There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan,

And the silver-winged sea-fowl on high,

Like meteors bespangle the sky,

Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride,

Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.

From the tumult and smoke of the city set free,
With eager and awful delight,
From the crest of the mountain I gaze upon thee,

I gaze, and am changed at the sight;
For mine eye is illumined, my genius takes flight,
My soul, like the sun, with a glance
Embraces the boundless expanse,

And moves on thy waters, wherever they roll,
From the day-darting zone to the night-shadowed

Who traverse thy banishing waves, The poor disinherited outcasts of man,

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pole.

My spirit descends where the day-spring is born, Where the billows are rubies on fire,

Where Europe exultingly drains

Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod,

And the breezes that rock the light cradle of morn | The life-blood from Africa's veins;

Are sweet as the Phenix's pyre.

O regions of beauty, of love and desire !

And spurns at his footstool the image of God!

The hour is approaching, - a terrible hour!
And Vengeance is benling her bow ;
Already the clouds of the hurricane lower,
And the rock-rending whirlwinds blow;
Bak rolls the huge Ocean, hell opens below;
The floods return headlong, they sweep
The slave-cultured lands to the deep,

In a moment entombed in the horriole void,
By their Maker himself in his anger destroyed.

Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles,
More lovely than clouds in the west,
When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles,
Sinks softly and sweetly to rest!

No-Father of mercy befriend the opprest;
At the voice of thy gospel of peace
May the sorrows of Africa cease ;
And slave and his master devoutly unite

To walk in thy freedom and dwell in thy light!

As homeward my weary-winged Fancy extends
Her star-lighted course through the skies,
High over the mighty Atlantic ascends,

And turns upon Europe her eyes :

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Ah me what new prospects, new horrors arise? Thou thing that windest round the soil w...! I see the war-tempested flood

All foaming, and panting with blood;
The panic-struck Owan in agony roars,
Rebounds from the battle, and flies to his shores.

For Britannia is wielding the trident to-day,
Consuming her foes in her ire,

And hurling her thunder with absolute sway
From her wave-ruling chariots of fire.

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Like a huge animal, which, downward Lτος
From the black clouds, lies weltering an is.
Lashing and writhing till its strength b
Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy s
Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep.
Thou speakest in the east and in the west
At once, and on thy heavily laden breast
Fleets come and go, and shapes that havi
Or motion, yet are moved and meet in st.

She triumphs; the winds and the waters con- The earth has naught of this nochan

spire

To spread her invincible name ;

The universe rings with her fame ;

But the cries of the fatherless mix with her praise,

And the tears of the widow are shed on her bays.

O Britain, dear Britain' the land of my birth;
O Isle most enchantingly fair!

Thou Pearl of the Ocean' thou Gem of the Earth!
O my Mother, my Mother, beware,

For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare!
O, let not thy birthright be sold

For reprobate glory and gold !

Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot,
They weigh down thy trunk, they will tear up

thy root,

stands

Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare
Give answer to the tempest-wakened air,
But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants TAI
At will, and wound its bosom as they gi
Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow
But in their stated rounds the wants
And pass like visions to their wontest hot
And come again, and vanish; the young bring
Looks ever bright with leaves and b

And Winter always winds his sullen hen,
When the wild Autumn, with a look for, ora,
Dies in his stormy manhood; and the sk
Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summerfa
O, wonderful thou art, great element,
And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent,
And lovely in repose! thy summer form
Is beautiful, and when the silver waves
Make music in earth's dark and wirling ave

The root of thine oak, O my country! that I love to wander on thy pebbled beach,
Rock-planted and flourishing free;

Marking the sunlight at the evening hour,
And hearken to the thoughts thy waters tra, -

Its branches are stretched o'er the uttermost lands, Eternity - Eternity and Power
And its shadow eclipses the sea.

BARRTGSWALL

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