Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Ship
As we stood there, waiting on the strand
Behold, a huge great vessel to us came,
Dancing upon the waters back to land,
As if it scorn’d the danger of the same.
Yet was it but a wooden frame and frail,
Glued together with some subtile matter;
Yet had it arms and wings, and head and tail,
And life to move itself upon the water.
Spenser.—Colin Clout, Vol. V. Line 212.
She walks the waters like a thing of life
And seems to dare the elements to strife.
Byron.—The Corsair, Canto I. Stanza 3.
[Adapted from Spenser, in whose mine Byron found the ore, fused it in the furnace of his own genius, applied his magnetic hammer to the casting, and fashioned it to its present beauty.]
Upon the gale she stoop’d her side,
And bounded o’er the swelling tide,
As she were dancing home;
The merry seamen laugh’d to see
Their gallant ship so lustily
Furrow the green-sea foam.
Scott.—Marmion, Canto II. Stanza 1.
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
Tennyson.—Break, Break, V. 3.