From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;
From the tumbling surf that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.
So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean
Of the poet's soul, erelong,
From each cave and rocky fastness
Floats some fragment of a song:
From the far-off isles enchanted
Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;
From the strong Will, and the Endeavor
Wrestles with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate; —
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
A WEARY weed, tossed to and fro,
Drearily drenched in the ocean brine,
Soaring high and sinking low,
Lashed along without will of mine;
Sport of the spume of the surging sea;
Flung on the foam, afar and anear,
Mark my manifold mystery,
Growth and grace in their place appear.
I bear round berries, gray and red,
Rootless and rover though I be;
My spangled leaves, when nicely spread,
Arboresce as a trunkless tree;
Corals curious coat me o'er,
White and hard in apt array;
Mid the wild waves' rude uproar
Gracefully grow I, night and day.
Hearts there are on the sounding shore,
Something whispers soft to me, Restless and roaming forevermore, Like this weary weed of the sea; Bear they yet on each beating breast The eternal type of the wondrous whole, Growth unfolding amidst unrest, Grace informing with silent soul.
CORNELIUS GEORGE FENNER.
FROM "THE PELICAN ISLAND."
LIGHT as a flake of foam upon the wind
Keel-upward from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled:
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself, alive.
Entranced in contemplation, vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.
It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing;
While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,
Through which mine eyes still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long, light wings, that flung a diamond-
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form, Sprang into light, and instantly descended. Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend, Or mourn his quick departure on the surge,
A shoal of dolphins tumbling in wild glee, Glowed with such orient tints, they might have
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy, I hung o'er these,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colors came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes,
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan
Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
These were but preludes to the revelry
That reigned at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,
As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners; aloof,
On wing-like fins, in bow-and-arrow figures,
The flying-fishes darted to and fro;
While spouting whales projected watery columns,
That turned to arches at their height, and seemed
The skeletons of crystal palaces
Built on the blue expanse, then perishing,
Frail as the element which they were made of:
Dolphins, in gambols, lent the lucid brine
Hues richer than the canopy of eve,
That overhung the scene with gorgeous clouds,
Decaying into gloom more beautiful
Than the sun's golden liveries which they lost :
Till light that hides, and darkness that reveals
The stars, exchanging guard, like sentinels
Of day and night,
transformed the face of
Above was wakefulness, silence around,
Beneath, repose, - repose that reached even me.
Power, will, sensation, memory, failed in turn;
My very essence seemed to pass away,
Like a thin cloud that melts across the moon,
Lost in the blue immensity of heaven.
TOIL on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,
Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;
Toil on! for the wisdom of man ye mock,
With your sand-based structures and domes of
rock,
Your columns the fathomless fountains' cave,
And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye 're a puny race thus to boldly rear
A fabric so vast in a realm so drear.
Ye bind the deep with your secret zone, -
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone,
Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,
And mountains exult where the wave hath been.
But why do ye plant, 'neath the billows dark,
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark ?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil ere the flowers are up,
There's a poison drop in man's purest cup,
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?
With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of the ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee;
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead ?
Ye build-ye build - but ye enter not in,
Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their
From the land of promise ye fade and die
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;
As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noiseless bones in oblivion hid,
Ye slumber unmarked mid the desolate main,
While the wonderand pride of your works remain.
FROM "THE PELICAN ISLAND."
By instinct taught, performed its little task,
To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
From its own essence exquisitely modelled;
There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers,
To frame new cells and tombs, then breed and die
As all their ancestors had done, - and rest,
Hermetically sealed, each in its shrine,
A statue in this temple of oblivion !
Millions of millions thus, from age to age,
With simplest skill and toil unweariable,
No moment and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening, brightening, gradual
By marvellous structure climbing towards the day.
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