Violets and cuckoo-buds; and sweetly these 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, 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 Whilst the indwelling spirit works on, massing The separate waves are swift to come and go, His foam-flecked purple to the sun. Eve comes, the floods race past, we see their white 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,— Lazily rocking on ocean's breast, Something in common, old friend, have we; 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. Cold fathoms down below the reach of storms, And on the mystic path of that fine line As newly gifted with a power divine. JAMES HEDDERWICK. [From The Villa by the Sea.] These his white steeds of the sea! J. HEDDERWICK. A Wave. BEING in thy dissolution known 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, For the great tide to stretch from rock to rock 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, Within thy joy the wailful voices keep; 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, |