Old Ocean was

Infinity of ages ere we breathed

Existence and he will be beautiful

When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound

In thundering concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, beatific Sea.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

By the Sea-Shore, Isle of Man.

WHY stand we gazing on the sparkling Brine,
With wonder smit by its transparency,

And all-enraptured with its purity ?—

Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline,
Have ever in them something of benign ;
Whether in gem, in water, or in sky,

A sleeping infant's brow, or wakeful eye
Of a young maiden, only not divine.
Scarcely the hand forbears to dip its palm
For beverage drawn as from a mountain-well.
Temptation centres in the liquid Calm ;

Our daily raiment seems no obstacle
To instantaneous plunging in, deep Sea!
And revelling in long embrace with thee.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

[From On a High Part of the Coast of Cumberland.]

SILENT, and steadfast as the vaulted sky,

The boundless plain of waters seems to lie :-
Comes that low sound from breezes rustling o'er
The grass-crowned headland that conceals the shore?
No; 'tis the earth-voice of the mighty sea,
Whispering how meek and gentle he can be!

WORDSWORTH.

A Sea Piece.

AT nightfall, walking on the cliff-crown'd shore,

Where sea and sky were in each other lost; Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar, Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast; I mark'd one well-moor'd vessel tempest-toss'd, Sails reef'd, helm lash'd, a dreadful siege she bore,

Her deck by billow after billow cross'd,

While every moment she might be no more:

Yet firmly anchor'd on the nether sand,

Like a chain'd Lion ramping at his foes,
Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose,

Till broke her cable ;-then she fled to land,

With all the waves in chase; throes following throes; She 'scaped, she struck,-she stood upon the strand

The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had pass'd; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky;
On shore that lonely vessel caught mine eye,
Her bow was sea-ward, all equipt her train,
Yet to the sun she spread her wings in vain,
Like a chained Eagle, impotent to fly;
There fix'd as if for ever to abide;

Far down the beach had roll'd the low neap-tide,
Whose mingling murmur faintly lull'd the ear:
"Is this," methought, "is this the doom of pride,
Check'd in the onset of thy brave career,
Ingloriously to rot by piecemeal here?"

Spring-tides return'd, and Fortune smiled; the bay
Received the rushing ocean to its breast;
While waves on waves innumerably prest,
Seem'd, with the prancing of their proud array,
Sea-horses, flash'd with foam, and snorting spray ;
Their power and thunder broke that vessel's rest;
Slowly, with new expanding life possest,
To her own element she glid away;

Buoyant and bounding like the polar Whale,
That takes his pastime; every joyful sail
Was to the freedom of the wind unfurl'd,
While right and left the parted surges curl'd:

-Go, gallant Bark, with such a tide and gale,
I'll pledge thee to a voyage round the world.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

[From The West Indies, Part i.]

HEN first Columbus, with the mighty hand

THEN

Of grasping genius, weigh'd the sea and land; The floods o'erbalanced :- where the tide of light, Day after day, rolled down the gulph of night, There seem'd one waste of waters ;—long in vain His spirit brooded o'er the Atlantic main, Far from the western cliffs he cast his eye O'er the wide ocean stretching to the sky: In calm magnificence the sun declined,

And left a paradise of clouds behind:

Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold
The billows in a sea of glory roll'd.

J. MONTGOMERY.

[From Greenland, Canto ii.

MIGHTY ocean, by whatever name

Known to vain man, is everywhere the same,

And deems all regions by his gulphs embraced

But vassal tenures of his sovereign waste.

J. MONTGOMERY.

[From Greenland, Canto v.]

CEAN, meanwhile, abroad hath burst the roof
That sepulchred his waves; he bounds aloof.

In boiling cataracts, as volcanoes spout

Their fiery fountains, gush the waters out; .
at morn the tempests cease,

And the freed ocean rolls himself to peace;
Broad to the sun his heaving breast expands,
He holds his mirror to a hundred lands.

J. MONTGOMERY.

From A Voyage Round the World.]
EMBLEM of eternity,

Unbeginning, endless sea!

J. MONTGOMERY.

Song of the Zetland Fisherman.

FAREWELL, merry maidens, to song and to laugh,

For the brave lads of Westra are bound to the Haaf ;

And we must have labour, and hunger, and pain,
Ere we dance with the maids of Dunrossness again.

For now, in our trim boats of Noroway deal,

We must dance on the waves, with the porpoise and seal; The breeze it shall pipe, so it pipe not too high,

And the gull be our songstress whene'er she flits by.