Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,-
Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

BYRON.

[From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv.]

THERE is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.

BYRON.

[From Don Juan, Canto ii.]

THE vast, salt, dread, eternal deep.

BYRON.

[From The Siege of Corinth.]

HERE shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea,

THERE

Which changeless rolls eternally.

[From The Fall of Jerusalem.]

N

On the margin of the flood

With lifted rod the Prophet stood;

And the summon'd east wind blew,

And aside it sternly threw

The gather'd waves, that took their stand,

Like crystal rocks, on either hand,
Or walls of sea-green marble piled
Round some irregular city wild.

Then the light of morning lay
On the wonder-pavèd way,
Where the treasures of the deep
In their caves of coral sleep.
The profound abysses, where
Was never sound from upper air,

BYRON.

Rang with Israel's chanted words :
King of kings! and Lord of lords!

Then with bow and banner glancing,
On exulting Egypt came,
With her chosen horsemen prancing,
And her cars on wheels of flame,

In a rich and boastful ring

All around her furious king.

But the Lord from out His cloud,

The Lord look'd down upon the proud;

And the host drave heavily

Down the deep bosom of the sea.

With a quick and sudden swell,

Prone the liquid ramparts fell;

Over horse, and over car,

Over every man of war,

Over Pharaoh's crown of gold,

The loud thundering billows roll'd.

As the level waters spread,

Down they sank, they sank like lead,

Down without a cry or groan.

And the morning sun, that shone

On myriads of bright-armed men,

Its meridian radiance then

Cast on a wide sea, heaving, as of yore,

Against a silent, solitary shore.

HENRY HART MILMAN.

[From To Jane-The Recollection.]

WE wandered to the pine forest

That skirts the ocean's foam;

The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep,
The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,

Which scattered from above the sun

A light of paradise.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Time.

UNFATHOMABLE Sea! whose waves are years!

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,

And, sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore!
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Who shall put forth on thee,

Unfathomable sea?

SHELLEY.

I

[From Stanzas written in Dejection.]

SEE the deep's untrampled floor,

With green and purple sea-weeds strown;

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved, in star-showers thrown.
I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion

How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion!

SHELLEY.

[From The Revolt of Islam, Canto i.]

THE evening was most clear

And beautiful; and there the sea I found,

Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

SHELLEY.

[From Second Sunday after Trinity.]

WHEN up some woodland dale we catch

The many-twinkling smile of ocean,

Or with pleas'd ear bewilder'd watch

His chime of restless motion;