So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!
I bear with me

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
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 thunderstrike 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' 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
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 wanton'd with thy breakers- they to me

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror—'t was a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid

my hand upon thy mane — as I do here.

BYRON.

THE ocean looketh up to heaven,
As 't were a living thing;
The homage of its waves is given,
In ceaseless worshipping.

They kneel upon the sloping sand
As bends the human knee,
A beautiful and tireless band,
The priesthood of the sea.

The sky is as a temple's arch,
The blue and wavy air
Is glorious with the spirit-march
Of messengers at prayer.

J. G. WHITTIER.

HYMN TO THE SEA.

WHO shall declare the secret of thy birth,
Thou old companion of the circling earth?
And having reached with keen poetic sight
Ere beast or happy bird

Through the vast silence stirred,
Roll back the folded darkness of the primal night?

Thou and the earth, twin sisters, as they say,
In the old prime were fashioned in one day;
And therefore thou delightest evermore
With her to lie and play

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 wild will is thine own,

Thy sole and virgin throne

Thy mood is ever changing—thy resolve the same.