I would be a merman bold,

I would sit and sing the whole of the day;

I would fill the sea-halls with a voice of power;
But at night I would roam abroad and play
With the mermaids in and out of the rocks,
Dressing their hair with the white sea flower;
And holding them back by their flowing locks
I would kiss them often under the sea,
And kiss them again till they kiss'd me
Laughingly, laughingly ;

And then we would wander away, away

To the pale green sea-groves straight and high, Chasing each other merrily.

LORD TENNYSON.

I would be a mermaid fair;

I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,

"Who is it loves me? who loves not me?"

I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall
Low adown, low adown,

From under my starry sea-bud crown,

Low adown and around,

And I should look like a fountain of gold,
Springing alone

With a shrill inner sound,

Over the throne

In the midst of the hall;

Till that great sea-snake under the sea

From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps.

Would slowly trail himself seven-fold

Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate

With his large calm eyes for the love of me.

And all the mermen under the sea

Would feel their immortality

Die in their hearts for the love of me.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Voyage.]

'AR ran the naked moon across

FAR

The houseless ocean's heaving field.

Across the boundless east we drove, Where those long swells of breaker weep The nutmeg rocks and isles of clove.

By sands and streaming flats, and floods
Of mighty mouth, we scudded fast.

At times the whole sea burn'd, at times
With wakes of fire we tore the dark.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Passing of Arthur.]

NLY the wan wave

ONLY

Brake in . . . rolling far along the gloomy shores,

The voice of days of old and days to be.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Passing of Arthur.]

THE phantom circle of a moaning sea.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Last Tournament.]

SWEETER than all memories of thee,
Deeper than any yearnings after thee,

Seem'd those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Holy Grail.]

HEAPT in mounds and ridges all the sea

Drove like a cataract.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From Lancelot and Elaine.]

BARE, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea,

Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all

Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,

Down on a bark.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From Enoch Arden.]

THE low moan of leaden-colour'd seas.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From The Lover's Tale, Part i.]
THE incorporate blaze of sun and sea.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From In Memoriam, xxxv.] THE moanings of the homeless sea.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From Maud, Part i.]

THE liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,

The silent sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land.

LORD TENNYSON.

[From Early Spring.]

THE deep,

All down the sand,

Is breathing in his sleep,

Heard by the land.

LORD TENNYSON.

Hymn to Ocean.

CRADLE, whence the suns ascend, old Ocean divine ;
O grave, whereto the suns descend, old Ocean divine :

O spreading in the calm of night thy mirror, wherein
The Moon her countenance doth bend, old Ocean divine.

O thou that dost in midnights still thy chorus of waves
With dances of the planet blend, old Ocean divine :

The morning and the evening blooms are roses of thine, Two roses that for thine are kenned, old Ocean divine.

O Aphrodite's panting breast, whose breathing doth make The waves to fall and ascend, old Ocean divine.