The Sea.

THESE froward waves, we feign they try

To utter to us some mystery:

Such is the euphuistic game

We baffled poets follow :

Pantheistic! all the same,

Like the sounding cymbal hollow :-
We it is and not the sea

Long to speak out God's mystery:
Immense and world-old salt ocean,

With thy moon-adoring motion,
Thou hast nought to us to say,

We must speak and thou obey.

WILLIAM BELL SCOTT.

IT

[From Better than Good.]

T is better than good when the heart is drear To wander alone by the ocean's side; Where clamorous sea-mews sailing near Make mournful music to meet the tide, Which rolls to the rocks with a witless glide, And roars, and batters the steadfast stone, And broken falls as the boulders guide; While in creek and cavern the waters moan, And the dungeoned tempests howl and groan. EARL OF SOUTHESK.

SPLE

Lighting and luring them on to the land,—
Far-away waves where the wan vessels whiten,
Blue rollers breaking in surf where we stand.
Curved like the necks of a legion of horses,
Each with his froth-gilded mane flowing free,
Hither they speed in perpetual courses,
Bearing thy riches, O beautiful sea!

Strong with the striving of yesterday's surges,

Lashed by the wanton winds leagues from the shore,

Each, driven fast by its follower, urges

Fearlessly those that are fleeting before;

How they leap over the ridges we walk on,
Flinging us gifts from the depths of the sea,-

Silvery fish for the foam-hunting falcon,

Palm-weed and pearls for my darling and me!
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

[From The Mountain.]

THE great, encircling, radiant sea,

Alone in its immensity.

E. C. STEDMAN.

[From On the Sea-Shore.]

UPON the rocky shore I sit alone;

The dark green sullen sea

Along the shore makes a perpetual moan
And struggles restlessly. . . .

Across the purple shoals of sunken rocks

The toppling racers break,

And suck, and roar, and beat with ceaseless shocks

The worn cliff's weedy base.

Heaved by the lifting swell, the long green flag

Of sea-weed floats and falls,

And down their shelf the raking pebbles drag,

As back the surf-wave crawls.

Something there is beneath that constant moan
That utterance seeks in vain ;

Like some dim memory, some hidden tone

That, helpless, haunts the brain.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

[From Off Shore.]

WHEN

the might of the summer

Is most on the sea;

When the days overcome her

With joy but to be,

With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her

not free,

But for hours upon hours

As a thrall she remains
Spell-bound as with flowers

And content in their chains,

And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes ;

Then only, far under

In the depths of her hold,
Some gleam of its wonder

Man's eye may behold,

Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.

Still deeper and dimmer

And goodlier they glow,

For the eyes of the swimmer

Who scans them below

As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of

sunshine and snow.

Soft blossomless frondage
And foliage that gleams

As to prisoners in bondage

The light of their dreams,

The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings

of its beams.

Not as prisoners entombed,

Waxen haggard and wizen,

But consoled and illumed

In the depths of their prison

With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,

From the banks and the beds

Of the waters divine

They lift up their heads

And the flowers of them shine

Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them, of water that glimmers like wine.

Bright bank over bank

Making glorious the gloom,

Soft rank upon rank,

Strange bloom after bloom,

They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim

sea's womb.

Through the subtle and tangible

Gloom without form,

Their branches, infrangible