They

They

turned to the Earth, but she frowns on her child;

turned to the Sea, and he smiled as of old! Sweeter was the peril of the breakers white and wild,

Sweeter than the land, with its bondage and gold!

Bayard Taylor

THE SEA.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save

thee ; FROM “CHILDE HAROLD."

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, Thy waters washed them power while they There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

were free, There is society where none intrudes

And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
I love not man the less, but nature more, Has dried up realms to deserts : not so thou ;
From these our interviews, in which I steal Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
From all I may be, or have been before,

Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow;
To mingle with the universe, and feel Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, -roll ! | form
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Man marks the earth with ruin, - his control Calm or convulsed, — in breeze, or gale, or
Stops with the shore ; – upon the watery plain storm,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
A shadow of man's ravage save his own, Dark - heaving ; boundless, endless, and sub-
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

lime,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, The image of Eternity, — the throne
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and un Of the Invisible ! even from out thy slime
known.

The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless,
His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields alone.
Are not a spoil for him, - thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he

And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joy wields

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward ; from a boy Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

I wantoned with thy breakers, — they to me
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

Made them a terror, 't was a pleasing fear ;
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

For I was as it were a child of thee,
And dashest him again to earth :- there let him

And trusted to thy billows far and near,
lay.

And laid my hand upon thy mane, -- as I do here.

BYRON.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

THE SEA.
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee and arbiter of war, —

THE sea, the sea, the open sea,
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, The blue, the fresh, the ever free ;

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Without a mark, without a bound,
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. I It runneth the earth's wide regions round;

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.

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.

I love, O, how I love to ride

But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,

face Where every mad wave drowns the moon, The blast that wakes the fury of the sea ? And whistles aloft its tempest tune,

O God ! thy justice makes the world turn pale, And tells how goeth the world below,

When on the armed fleet, that royally And why the southwest wind doth blow! Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite I never was on the dull, tame shore

Some city or invade some thoughtless realm, But I loved the great sea more and more, Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks And backward flew to her billowy breast,

Are whirled like chaff upon the waves ; the Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest,

sails And a mother she was and is to me,

| Fly, rent like webs of gossamer ; the masts For I was born on the open sea.

Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks

Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, The waves were white, and red the morn, Their cruel engines ; and their hosts, arrayed In the noisy hour when I was born ;

In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,

By whirlpools or dashed dead upon the rocks. And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;

Then stand the nations still with awe, and And never was heard such an outcry wild,

pause As welcomed to life the ocean child.

A moment from the bloody work of war.
I have lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a rover's life,

These restless surges eat away the shores
With wealth to spend, and a power to range, Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain
But never have sought or sighed for change : Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down,
And death, whenever he comes to me,

And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea ! Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar

BARRY CORNWALL. 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
A HYMN OF THE SEA.

To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age,

He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways

His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have

The long wave rolling from the southern pole scooped

To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy

s shore, thy That smonlder under ocean, heave on high breath,

The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, That moved in the beginning o'er his face,

A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves

The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall.

With herb and tree ; sweet fountains gush ; Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up,

sweet airs As at the first, to water the great earth,

Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowAnd keep her valleys green. A hundred realms

ers, Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind,

Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look And in the dropping shower with gladness hear

On thy creation and pronounce it good. Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth

Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, Over the boundless blue, where joyously

| Praise thee in silent beauty; and its woods The bright crests of innumerable waves

Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands

| The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn. Of a great multitude are upward flung

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE SEA.

10 gardens of Eden ! in vain

Placed far on the fathomless main,
BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious ; Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth,
Mild, majestic, foaming, free, —

When pure was her heart and unbroken her truth.
Over time itself victorious,
Image of eternity !

But now the fair rivers of Paradise wind

Through countries and kingdoms o'erthrown ; Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee,

Where the giant of tyranny crushes mankind, See thy surface ebb and flow,

Where he reigns, — and will soon reign alone; Yet attempt not to explore thee

For wide and more wide, o'er the sunbeaming zone In thy soundless depths below.

He stretches his hundred-fold arms,

Despoiling, destroying its charms;
Whether morning's splendors steep thee

Beneath his broad footstep the Ganges is dry,
With the rainbow's glowing grace,

And the mountains recoil from the flash of his eye. Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee, 'T is but for a moment's space.

Thus the pestilent Upas, the demon of trees,
Earth, - her valleys and her mountains,

Its boughs o'er the wilderness spreads,
Mortal man's behests obey;

And with livid contagion polluting the breeze,
The unfathomable fountains

Its mildewing influence sheds ;
Scoff his search and scorn his sway.

The birds on the wing, and the flowers in their beds,

Are slain by its venomous breath,
Such art thou, stupendous ocean !

That darkens the noonday with death,
But, if overwhelmed by thee,

And pale ghosts of travellers wander around,
Can we think, without emotion,

While their mouldering skeletons whiten the What must thy Creator be ?

ground.
BERNARD BARTON.

Ah! why hath Jehovah, in forming the world,
With the waters divided the land,

His ramparts of rocks round the continent hurled,
THE OCEAN.

And cradled the deep in his hand, (Written at Scarborough, in the summer of 1805.) If man may transgress his eternal command, ALL hail to the ruins, the rocks, and the shores !

And leap o'er the bounds of his birth, Thou wide-rolling Ocean, all hail !

To ravage the uttermost earth, Now brilliant with sunbeams and dimpled with

And violate nations and realms that should be

Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea ?
• oars,
Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,
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,

Who traverse thy banishing waves, Like meteors bespangle the sky,

The poor disinherited outcasts of man, Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride,

Whom Avarice coins into slaves. Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.

From the homes of their kindred, their fore

fathers' graves, From the tumult and smoke of the city set free. | Love, friendship, and conjugal bliss, With eager and awful delight,

They are dragged on the hoary abyss; From the crest of the mountain I gaze upon thee,

The shark hears their shrieks, and, ascending toI gaze, — and am changed at the sight;

day, For inine eye is illumined, my genius takes flight. Demands of the spoiler his share of the prey. My soul, like the sun, with a glance Embraces the boundless expanse,

Then joy to the tempest that whelms them beneath, And moves on thy waters, wherever they roll,

And makes their destruction its sport; From the day-darting zone to the night-shadowed

But woe to the winds that propitiously breathe,

And waft them in safety to port, pole.

Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon My spirit descends where the day-spring is born, resort; Where the billows are rubies on fire,

Where Europe exultingly drains And the breezes that rock the light cradle of morn The life-blood from Africa's veins ; Are sweet as the Phænix's pyre.

Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod, O regions of beauty, of love and desire ! | And spurns at his footstool the image of God!

The hour is approaching, - a terrible hour! | The blood of our ancestors nourished the tree; And Vengeance is bending her bow ;

From their tombs, from their ashes, it sprung; Already the clouds of the hurricane lower, Its boughs with their trophies are hung; And the rock-rending whirlwinds blow; Their spirit dwells in it, and — hark! for it Back rolls the huge Ocean, hell opens below;

spoke, The floods return headlong, — they sweep The voice of our fathers ascends from their oak. The slave-cultured lands to the deep, In a moment entom bed in the horrible void, “Ye Britons, who dwell where we conquered of By their Maker himself in his anger destroyed. old,

| Who inherit our battle-field graves; Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles, Though poor were your fathers, – gigantic and More lovely than clouds in the west, When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles, We were not, we could not be, slaves ; Sinks softly and sweetly to rest ?

But firm as our rocks, and as free as our waves, No!- Father of mercy! befriend the opprest; The spears of the Romans we broke, At the voice of thy gospel of peace

We never stooped under their yoke. May the sorrows of Africa cease ;

In the shipwreck of nations we stood up alone, And slave and his master devoutly unite

The world was great Cæsar's, but Britain our own. To walk in thy freedom and dwell in thy light!

JAMES MONTGOMERY,

bold,

As homeward my weary-winged Fancy extends

ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.
Her star-lighted course through the skies, .
High over the mighty Atlantic ascends,

O Thou vast Ocean ! ever-sounding Sea !
And turns upon Europe her eyes :

Thou symbol of a drear immensity ! Ah me! what new prospects, new horrors arise ? Thou thing that windest round the solid world I see the war-tempested flood

Like a huge animal, which, downward hurled All foaming, and panting with blood;

From the black clouds, lies weltering and alone, The panic-struck Ocean in agony roars,

Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone ! Rebounds from the battle, and flies to his shores. | Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep

Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep. For Britannia is wielding the trident to-day, Thou speakest in the east and in the west Consuming her foes in her ire,

At once, and on thy heavily laden breast And hurling her thunder with absolute sway Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life From her wave-ruling chariots of fire.

Or motion, yet are moved and meet in strife. She triumphs ; the winds and the waters con The earth has naught of this: no chance or change spire

Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare To spread her invincible name;

Give answer to the tempest-wakened air ; The universe rings with her fame;

But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range But the cries of the fatherless mix with her At will, and wound its bosom as they go : praise,

Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow : And the tears of the widow are shed on her bays. But in their stated rounds the seasons come,

And pass like visions to their wonted home ; O Britain, dear Britain ! the land of my birth; And come again, and vanish ; the young Spring O Isle most enchantingly fair !

Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming; Thou Pearl of the Ocean ! thou Gem of the Earth! And Winter always winds his sullen horn, O my Mother, my Mother, beware,

When the wild Autumn, with a look forlorn, For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare! Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies 0, let not thy birthright be sold

Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies. For reprobate glory and gold !

O, wonderful thou art, great element, Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot, And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent, They weigh down thy trunk, they will tear up And lovely in repose ! thy summer form thy root, —

Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves

Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, The root of thine oak, O my country! that I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, stands

Marking the sunlight at the evening hour, Rock-planted and flourishing free ;

And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach, Its branches are stretched o'er the uttermost lands, Eternity - Eternity — and Power. And its shadow eclipses the sea.

BARRY CORNWALL