At sea! my bark--at sea!

With the winds, and the wild clouds and me;

The low shore soon

Will be down with the moon,

And none on the waves but we! . . .

On! on! with a swoop and a swirl,

High over the clear waves' curl;

Under thy prow,

Like a fairy, now,

Make the blue water bubble with pearl!

E. ARNOLD.

[From The Forsaken Merman.]

COME, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us

The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl.

Singing: "Here came a mortal,

But faithless was she!

And alone dwell for ever

The kings of the sea."

But children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,

Up the creeks we will hie,

Over banks of bright seaweed

The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white, sleeping town;

At the church on the hill-side—

And then come back down.

Singing: "There dwells a loved one, But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever

The kings of the sea."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

[From Dover Beach.]

HE sea is calm to-night.

THE

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

M. ARNOLD.

[From A Southern Night.]

THE sandy spits, the shore-lock'd lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;

The soft Mediterranean breaks

At my feet, free.

M. ARNOLD.

[From The Future.]

'HE stars come out, and the night-wind

THE

Brings up the stream

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

M. ARNOLD.

[From The New Sirens.]

THE howling levels

Of the deep.

M. ARNOLD.

[From Switzerland-To Marguerite.]

HE unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

THE

M. ARNOLD.

[From The Human Tragedy, Act ii.]

UT when a sunny sevennight had passed,

BUT

Up from the south there came a trailing cloud,

And in its train an ever-rising blast,

That soon was singing high in sail and shroud

And as it waxed, the sky grew overcast,

Lurid and low ;-whereat the breakers proud

Curved their strong crests, flung up their forelocks hoar, And, madly rearing, plunged towards the shore.

And still as waned the day the wrathful ocean
Higher and higher rose, and to and fro
The slippery billows slid in shapeless motion,
Now dense and dark, now shivered into snow;
Then once again as thick as hell-hag's potion,
Clotted with briny litter from below:
Like leaden coffins yawning first to sight,

Then swiftly hidden with fringed shrouds of white.

And where the sun would have been seen to set,
If sun had been, the sky was darkened most,
And drooped the welkin lower and lower yet,
As night stole on without her starry host.