ROLL thou deep and dark over thee in vain:
OLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
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, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where are they? Thy waters washed them power 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' play, Time 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 wantoned with thy breakers, they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 'twas 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. -Lord Byron (Childe Harold).
THOU vast Ocean' ever-sounding sea! Thou symbol of a drear immensity!
Thou thing that windest round the solid world Like a huge animal, which, downward hurled From the dark clouds, lies weltering and alone, Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone. Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep. Thou speakest in the east and in the west At once, and on thy heavily laden breast
Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life Or motion, yet are moved and meet in strife.
The earth has naught of this: no chance or change Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare Give answer to the tempest-wakened air; But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range At will, and wound its bosom as they go: Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow: But in their stated rounds the seasons come, And pass like visions to their wonted, home; And come again, and vanish; the young spring Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming; And winter always winds his sullen horn, When the wild autumn, with a look forlorn,
Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies. O, wonderful thou art, great element, And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent; And lovely in repose! thy summer form
Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves
Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, Marking the sunlight at the evening hour, And harken to the thoughts thy waters teach,— Eternity Eternity-and Power.
-Bryan W. Procter (Barry Cornwall).
THE 'HE most fearful and impressive exhibitions of power known to our globe, belong to the ocean. The volcano, with its ascending flame and falling torrents of fire, and the earthquake, whose footstep is on the ruin of cities, are circumscribed in the desolating range of their visitations. But the ocean, when it once rouses itself in its nainless strength, shakes a thousand shores with its storm and thunder. Navies of oak and iron are tossed in mockery from its crest, and armaments, manned by the strength and courage of millions, perish among its bubbles.
THIS Sails the unshadowed main
HIS is the ship of pearl, which poets feign,
The venturesome bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted where the syren sings, And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed-
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed.
EEP in the wave is a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet and gold fish rove; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine Far down in the green and grassy brine. The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow: From coral rocks the sea-plants lift
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; The water is calm and still below,
For the winds and the waves are absent there, Aud the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air: There with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen
To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter: There was a light and easy motion
The fan coral sweeps through the clear deep sea; And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea; And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms Has made the top of the waves his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies, When the myriad voices of ocean roar, When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the recks on the shore, Then, far below, in the peaceful sea, The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, Where the waters murmur tranquilly Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. -James Gates Percival.
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