I

[From A Wedding Sermon.]

HE truths of Love are like the sea

THE

For clearness and for mystery.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

The Sea's Bride.

ADA dreams by the sea-beach

(How far out the ripples reach !)

She is very sweet;

Comes a wave with opal lips

Murmuring of shells and ships,

Kissing Ada's feet.

Ada sleeps by the sea-beach.

(How close up the ripples reach-
Will they never turn?)

Phosphor lamps begin to shine,
Glance and flow the coraline,

Till the liquid lengths of brine
Into flashes burn.

Ada wakes by the sea-beach,

Round and round the deep waves reach,
Sways the eddying tide,

Clasps and clings the amber weed;

Prays the maiden-she has need,

'Mid the waters wide.

Sea, thine arms are very soft;
Wave, thy kisses wake not oft;
Rock her, billow, soft and slow;
Surge, sing to her light and low,

Cheer thy bonny bride.

H. CHOLMONDELEY PENNell.

[From Stornelli and Strambotti.]

"AS beats the sea against the rocks!" you cried,

Against your stubborn will my soul is hurl'd."

You meant the seeming-daunted broken tide,

With scattered spray and shattered crests uncurl'd,
That, from the shore, we pity or deride;

And yet these dying waters, spent and swirl'd,

Their stony limits do themselves decide,

And fashion to their will the unconscious world.

A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

[From Apprehension.]

VEN such to thee am I; but thou to me

EVE

As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea,

Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill.
But who, but who shall give such rest to thee?
The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually
Call to the land, and call unanswered still.

A. M. F. ROBINSON.

[From The New Arcadia, Prologue.]

NOT where they clash ashore, and break and moan,

Are waters deadliest.,

A. M. F. ROBINSON.

Он

[From Song.]

H what comes over the sea,
Shoals and quicksands past;
And what comes home to me,
Sailing slow, sailing fast?

A wind comes over the sea
With a moan in its blast;
But nothing comes home to me,

Sailing slow, sailing fast.

CHRISTINA Rossetti.

[From By the Sea.]

HY does the sea moan evermore?

WHY

Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,

It frets against the boundary shore;

All earth's full rivers cannot fill

The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

CHRISTINA Rossetti.

A Storm at Sea.

REAT clouds, like war-ships, speed athwart the sky, And the white drift, a full-set mainsail, gleams : The savage blast, through the taut cordage screams, Or fitful moans with melancholy cry:

Around, the raging waters foaming lie

In frenzied wrath, and not a sun-ray beams.
The mother, in her broken slumber, dreams
Of her dear sailor, shuddering lest he die!
Ocean runs riot! and the bruiséd waves

Are blue and green with overmastering blows;
The tangled weeds, disturbed, torn from their bed
A hundred fathoms down 'mid sailors' graves,
Toss here and there, as light as fresh-fallen snows,
And dismal caves disgorge their prisoned dead.

EARL OF ROSSLYN.

[From The Wreck.]

ITS masts of might, its sails so free,

Had borne the scathless keel
Through many a day of darkened sea,
And many a storm of steel;

When all the winds were calm it met

(With home returning prore)

With the lull

Of the waves

On a low lee shore.

The voices of the night are mute
Beneath the moon's eclipse;

The silence of the fitful flute
Is on the dying lips.

The silence of my lonely heart

Is kept for evermore

In the lull

Of the waves

On a low lee shore.

JOHN RUSKIN.

I

[From Song.]

LOVE the eddying circling sweep,
The mantling and the foam.

Of murmuring waters dark and deep
Amid the valleys lone.

It is a terror, yet 'tis sweet
Upon some broken brow

To look upon the distant sweep

Of ocean spread below.

RUSKIN.