Violets and cuckoo-buds; and sweetly these
Live innocent lives, each flower in its green field,
Joying as children in sun, air, and sleep.
But thou art terrible, with the unrevealed
Burden of dim lamentful prophecies,

And thy lone life is passionate and deep.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

[From The Castle.]

THE tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore;

The tenderest light was in the western sky;

Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,

The sea articulated o'er and o'er

To comfort all tired things; and one might pore,

Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,
On that slow-fading, amber radiancy

Past the long levels of the ocean floor.

E. DOWDEN.

[From The Heroines—Andromeda.]

THE wide

Intolerable splendour of the sea,

Calm in a liquid hush of summer morn.

E. DOWDEN.

HUSH! while the vaulted hollow of the night

Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth, Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan? Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light, And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth: Cry, Sea! it is thy hour: thou art alone.

E. DOWDEN.

OLD

[From At Sea.]

LD Ocean rolls like time, each billow passing
Into another melts, and is no more,

Whilst the indwelling spirit works on, massing
The great whole as before.

The separate waves are swift to come and go,
But the deep smiles, as they die one by one,
In lazy pleasure lifting from below

His foam-flecked purple to the sun.

Eve comes, the floods race past, we see their white
Thrilled through by weird sea-fires, a burning shiver
Which for one moment lives in eager light

And then-is quenched for ever.

SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS Doyle.

[From To a Sea-Bird.]

AUNTERING hither on listless wings,

SAUN

Careless vagabond of the sea,

Little thou heed'st the surf that sings,

The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,—
Give me to keep thy company. .

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,

Something in common, old friend, have we;
Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest,

I to the waters look for rest,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

BRET HARTE.

[From Under the Waves.]

THROUGH wilds of silent sea-grass, rock, and sand, Where monsters swim and crawl-through slimy

caves

O'er peaks that cannot hear the sound of waves

Low trails the Electric Wire from strand to strand,

Or festoons chasms wide-yawning and profound.
Darkling it trails 'mong shells and floating forms—
Over the dismal faces of the drown'd--

Cold fathoms down below the reach of storms,
Or tides deep-heaving at the moon's command.

And on the mystic path of that fine line
Go wondrous messages. Far nations talk,
As near as arm-link'd lovers in their walk,
Through twice a thousand miles of awful brine!
Man's speech through ocean flits, like light express'd
Through the rent cloud. Knit be the hearts as now
The exulting shores of England and the West!
Proud Science wears a glory on her brow,

As newly gifted with a power divine.

JAMES HEDDERWICK.

[From The Villa by the Sea.]
FORWARD how the storm-god urges

These his white steeds of the sea!

J. HEDDERWICK.

A Wave.

BEING in thy dissolution known
Most lovely then;

O Life that ever has to die alone,

To live again;

O bounding Heart that still must bow and break

To touch thine end;

O broken Purpose that must failure take,
And deathward bend,

For the great tide to stretch from rock to rock
His shining way;

O wandering Will that from the furthest shock. Of sea-deeps grey,

Silver constraint of secret light on high

Leads safe to shore;

O living Rapture that dost inly sigh,
And evermore

Within thy joy the wailful voices keep;
I see thee now,

O Son of the unfathomable deep!

And trembling know

The crowned Shadow of man's opposites,

The forces dread

That sway him into being, blanched with lights Of thunder bred;

A poisèd Passion wrought from central breath

Of whirling storms,

And evermore a deathless life in death,

That still re-forms.

And thou, man's prototype in varying moods,

Didst lonely beat

The vacant shores and speechless solitudes

With silver feet,

Through the great æons wandering forlorn

In search of him,