So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell! No token stone nor glittering shell, But long and oft shall Memory tell Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the sea. J. G. WHITTIER. THE SEA. It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. Oh, ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea; Oh, ye whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody, Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! KEATS. APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN. 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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Their clay creator the vain title take 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' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime 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 Were a delight; and if the freshening sea my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. BYRON. THE ocean looketh up to heaven, They kneel upon the sloping sand The sky is as a temple's arch, J. G. WHITTIER. HYMN TO THE SEA. WHO shall declare the secret of thy birth, Through the vast silence stirred, Thou and the earth, twin sisters, as they say, The summer hours away, Curling thy loving ripples up her quiet shore. She is a married matron long ago With nations at her side; her milk doth flow Each year; but thee no husband dares to tame, Thy sole and virgin throne Thy mood is ever changing—thy resolve the same. |