| |
| HAIL to thy face and odors, glorious Sea! | |
| ’T were thanklessness in me to bless thee not, | |
| Great, beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile | |
| My heart beats calmer, and my very mind | |
| Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer | 5 |
| Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world! | |
| Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din | |
| To me is peace, thy restlessness repose. | |
| Even gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes | |
| With all the darling field-flowers in their prime, | 10 |
| And gardens haunted by the nightingale’s | |
| Long trills and gushing ecstasies of song, | |
| For these wild headlands, and the sea-mews clang. | |
| |
| With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea, | |
| I long not to o’erlook earth’s fairest glades | 15 |
| And green savannahs,—earth has not a plain | |
| So boundless or so beautiful as thine; | |
| The eagle’s vision cannot take it in; | |
| The lightning’s wing, too weak to sweep its space, | |
| Sinks half-way o’er it like a wearied bird; | 20 |
| It is the mirror of the stars, where all | |
| Their hosts within the concave firmament, | |
| Gay marching to the music of the spheres, | |
Can see themselves at once.
Nor on the stage | |
| Of rural landscape are there lights and shades | 25 |
| Of more harmonious dance and play than thine. | |
| How vividly this moment brightens forth, | |
| Between gray parallel and leaden breadths, | |
| A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league, | |
| Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove’s neck, | 30 |
| And giving to the glancing sea-bird’s wing | |
The semblance of a meteor.
Mighty Sea! | |
| Chameleon-like thou changest, but there ’s love | |
| In all thy change, and constant sympathy | |
| With yonder Sky,—thy mistress; from her brow | 35 |
| Thou tak’st thy moods and wear’st her colors on | |
| Thy faithful bosom; morning’s milky white, | |
| Noon’s sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve; | |
| And all thy balmier hours, fair Element, | |
| Have, such divine complexion, crispéd smiles, | 40 |
| Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings, | |
| That little is the wonder Love’s own Queen | |
| From thee of old was fabled to have sprung,— | |
| Creation’s common! which no human power | |
| Can parcel or enclose; the lordliest floods | 45 |
| And cataracts that the tiny hands of man | |
| Can tame, conduct, or bound are drops of dew | |
| To thee, that couldst subdue the earth itself, | |
| And brook’st commandment from the heavens alone | |
For marshalling thy waves.
Yet, potent Sea! | 50 |
| How placidly thy moist lips speak even now | |
| Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be | |
| So fanciless as to feel no gratitude | |
| That power and grandeur can be so serene, | |
| Soothing the home-bound navy’s peaceful way, | 55 |
| And rocking even the fisher’s little bark | |
| As gently as a mother rocks her child? | |
| |
| The inhabitants of other worlds behold | |
| Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share | |
| On earth’s rotundity; and is he not | 60 |
| A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man | |
| Who sees not, or who seeing has no joy | |
| In thy magnificence? What though thou art | |
| Unconscious and material, thou canst reach | |
| The inmost immaterial mind’s recess, | 65 |
| And with thy tints and motion stir its chords | |
| To music, like the light on Memnon’s lyre! | |
| The Spirit of the Universe in thee | |
| Is visible; thou hast in thee the life,— | |
| The eternal, graceful, and majestic life | 70 |
| Of nature, and the natural human heart | |
| Is therefore bound to thee with holy love. | |
| Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling sea | |
| Has spires and mansions more amusive still,— | |
| Men’s volant homes that measure liquid space | 75 |
| On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land | |
| With pained and panting steeds and clouds of dust | |
| Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair | |
| Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, | |
| Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, | 80 |
| Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night, | |
| Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts | |
| In long array, or hither flit and yond | |
| Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights, | |
| Like spirits on the darkness of the deep. | 85 |
| |
| There is a magnet-like attraction in | |
| These waters to the imaginative power | |
| That links the viewless with the visible, | |
| And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond | |
| Yon highway of the world my fancy flies, | 90 |
| When by her tall and triple mast we know | |
| Some noble voyager that has to woo | |
| The trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge. | |
| The coral groves,—the shores of conch and pearl | |
| Where she will cast her anchor and reflect | 95 |
| Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves, | |
| And under planets brighter than our own; | |
| The nights of palmy isles, that she will see | |
| Lit boundless by the fire-fly,—all the smells | |
| Of tropic fruits that will regale her,—all | 100 |
| The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting | |
| Varieties of life she has to greet, | |
| Come swarming o’er the meditative mind. | |
| |
| True, to the dream of fancy Ocean has | |
| His darker tints; but where ’s the element | 105 |
| That checkers not its usefulness to man | |
| With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes | |
| Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes | |
| Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang | |
| Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat | 110 |
| As riddled ashes,—silent as the grave? | |
| Walks not contagion on the air itself? | |
| I should old Ocean’s saturnalian days | |
| And roaring nights of revelry and sport | |
| With wreck and human woe be loath to sing; | 115 |
| For they are few, and all their ills weigh light | |
| Against his sacred usefulness, that bids | |
| Our pensile globe revolve in purer air. | |
| Here morn and eve with blushing thanks receive | |
| Their freshening dews, gay fluttering breezes cool | 120 |
| Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes, | |
| And here the spring dips down her emerald urn | |
For showers to glad the earth.
Old Ocean was, | |
| Infinity of ages ere we breathed | |
| Existence, and he will be beautiful | 125 |
| When all the living world that sees him now | |
| Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun. | |
| Quelling from age to age the vital throb | |
| In human hearts, death shall not subjugate | |
| The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast, | 130 |
| Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound | |
| In thundering concert with the quiring winds; | |
| But long as man to parent nature owns | |
| Instinctive homage, and in times beyond | |
| The power of thought to reach, bard after bard | 135 |
| Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA. | |
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