THE TEMPEST. E were crowded in the cabin, To be shattered by the blast, So we shuddered there in silence- As thus we sat in darkness, Each one busy in his prayers, "We are lost!" the captain shouted As he staggered down the stairs. But his little daughter whispered, As she took his icy hand, "Isn't God upon the ocean Just the same as on the land?" Then we kissed the little maiden, THE BAY OF BISCAY. OUD roared the dreaded thunder, Now dashed upon the billow, None stops the dreadful leak; At length the wished-for morrow Each heaved a bitter sigh; Her yielding timbers sever, Her pitchy seams are rent, We hail her with three cheers; ANDREW CHERP THE SEA-LIMITS. ONSIDER the sea's listless chime; The murmur of the earth's own shell, Is the era's end. Our sight may pass No furlong farther. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet which is death's,—it hath The mournfulness of ancient life, Enduring always at dull strife. As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is on the sands. Lost utterly, the whole sky stands Gray and not known along its path. Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee. Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Surge and sink back and surge again,— Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strewn beach, GRANDEUR OF THE OCEAN. HE most fearful and impressive exhibitions of power known to our globe, belong to the ocean. The volcano, with its ascending flame and falling torrents of fire, and the earthquake, whose footstep is on the ruin of cities, are circumscribed in the desolating range of their visitations. But the ocean, when it once rouses itself in its chainless strength, shakes a thousand shores with its storm and thunder. Navies of oak and iron are tossed in mockery from its crest, and armaments, manned by the strength and courage of millions, perish among its bubbles. The avalanche, shaken from its glittering steep, if it | his needle now settles, with a fixedness which love has roll to the bosom of the earth, melts away, and is lost stolen as the symbol of its constancy, to the polar star. in vapor; but if it plunge into the embrace of the ocean, this mountain mass of ice and hail is borne about for ages in tumult and terror; it is the drifting monument of the ocean's dead. The tempest on land is impeded by forests, and broken by mountains; but on the plain of the deep it rushes unresisted; and when its strength is at last spent, ten thousand giant waves still roll its terrors onward. Now, however, he can dispense even with sail, and wind, and flowing wave. He constructs and propels his vast engines of flame and vapor, and, through the solitude of the sea, as over the solid land, goes thundering on his track. On the ocean, too, thrones have been lost and won. On the fate of Actium was sus pended the empire of the world. In the gulf of Salamis, the pride of Persia found a grave; and the crescent set forever in the waters of Navarino; while, at Trafalgar and the Nile, nations held their breath "As each gun From its adamantine lips, Spread a death-shade round the ships The mountain lake and the meadow stream are inhabited only by the timid prey of the angler; but the ocean is the home of the leviathan-his ways are in the mighty deep. The glittering pebble and the rainbowtinted shell, which the returning tide has left on the shore, and the watery gem which the pearl-diver reaches at the peril of his life, are all that man can filch from the treasures of the sea. The groves of coral which wave over its pavements, and the halls of amber which glow in its depths, are beyond his approaches, save when he goes down there to seek, amid their si-social being. It invests him with feelings, associations, lent magnificence, his burial monument. The islands, the continents, the shores of civilized and savage realms, the capitals of kings, are worn by time, washed away by the wave, consumed by the flame, or sunk by the earthquake; but the ocean still remains, and still rolls on in the greatness of its unabated strength. Over the majesty of its form and the marvel of its might, time and disaster have no power. Such as creation's dawn beheld, it rolleth now. The vast clouds of vapor which roll up from its bosom, float away to encircle the globe; on distant mountains and deserts they pour out their watery treasures, which gather themselves again in streams and torrents, to return, with exhulting bounds, to their parent ocean. These are the messengers which proclaim in every land the exhaustless resources of the sea; but it is reserved for those who go down in ships, and who do business on the great waters, to see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. Let one go up upon deck in the middle watch of a still night, with naught above him but the silent and solemn skies, and naught around and beneath him but an interminable waste of waters, and with the conviction that there is but a plank between him and eternity, a feeling of loneliness, solitude, and desertion, mingled with a sentiment of reverence for the vast, mysterious and unknown, will come upon him with a power, all unknown before, and he might stand for hours entranced in reverence and tears. Man, also, has made the ocean the theatre of his power. The ship in which he rides that element, is one of the highest triumphs of his skill. At first, this floating fabric was only a frail bark, slowly urged by the laboring oar. The sail, at length, arose and spread its wings to the wind. Still he had no power to direct his course when the lofty promontory sunk from sight, or the orbs above him were lost in clouds. But the secret of the magnet is, at length, revealed to him, and But, of all the wonders appertaining to the ocean, the greatest, perhaps, is its transforming power on man. It unravels and weaves anew the web of his moral and and habits, to which he has been an entire stranger. It breaks up the sealed fountain of his nature, and lifts his soul into features prominent as the cliffs which beetle over its surge. Once the adopted child of the ocean, he can never bring back his entire sympathies to land. He will still move in his dreams over that vast waste of waters, still bound in exultation and triumph through its foaming billows. All the other realities of life will be comparatively tame, and he will sigh for his tossing element, as the caged eagle for the roar and arrowy light of his mountain cataract. WALTER COLTON. THE GREAT DEEP. EAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious; Image of eternity! Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee, BERNARD BARTON. ON THE BEACH. 'HE sun is low, as ocean's flow The billow gleams in parting beams, Whilst childhood stands upon the sands To greet the coming fisher's oar. Swift to my heart the waves impart Another dream of restless life, As some proud mind the fierce fates bind, Or doom to vain and endless strife. The waves are bright with peace to-night, And gladly bound 'neath summer's reign; I tread the verge of the shelving surge, To muse upon its wild refrain. O deep! thy winds, in murmuring chimes Sweet to my ear, my love implore, Thou dost enthral with siren call, And tempt me from thy peaceful shore! Yes, o'er thy graves, thy heaving waves, A stern delight with danger dwells; There's buoyant life amid thy strife, And rapture in thy lonely dells. E'en in thy wrath, thy surging path Hath peril's joy beyond thy shores! Amid the glare of thy despair, The soul above thy terror soars. But 'neath thy smile there's death and wile, The dark abyss, the waiting grave! Thy surges close o'er human woes On distant strand, in secret cave' Insatiate sea! oh, where is she Who trod in love thy gathered sands? Thou gavest her back as wreck and wrack, Pallid, to sad, imploring hands! And where is he, O sea! O sea! Who dared thy treacherous crests to ride? The quick command, the hastening hand, Were vain to rescue from thy tide! Yet not in woe the plaint should go Against thee for the storm's behest; Thou'rt but the slave when wild winds rave And tyrant tempests lash thy breast. Doomed in thy keep the fates to meet, Thou dost obey a mightier wrath! Imperious sway commands thy way, And riots in its reckless path. Shall time's swift flight e'er stay thy might That dooms us to thy caves unblest' Or God's right arm thy tides disarm, No still thy waves with moaning staves WILLIAM WHITEHEAD BY THE SEA T is a beauteous evening, calm and free, Dear child' dear girl! that walk'st with me here Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, POLL for the brave The brave that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore. Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried Had made the vessel heel, And laid her on her side. A land-breeze shook the shrouds, Brave Kempenfelt is gone, It was not in the battle; No tempest gave the shock; His sword was in its sheath, 1782 N vain the cords and axes were prepared, Like him the smooth and mournful verse to dress As o'er the surge the stooping mainmast hung, NE night came on a hurricane, The sea was mountains rolling, "A strong nor'wester's blowing, Bill; "Foolhardy chaps who live in towns, What danger they are all in, And now lie quaking in their beds, To be upon the ocean! And as for them who're out all day To cheer their babes and spouses,While you and I, Bill, on the deck Are comfortably lying, My eyes! what tiles and chimney-po Above their heads are fiving! "And very often have we heard How men are killed and undone By overturns of carriages, By thieves and fires in London. Then, Bill, let us thank Providence WILLIAM Pirt THE DISAPPOINTED LOVER WILL go back to the great sweet mother- I will go down to her, I and none other. O fair green-girdled mother of mine, Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy large embraces are keen like pain. I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; This woven raiment of nights and days, Were it once cast off and unwouud from me, Clothed with the green, and crowned with the foam, A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. THE LONG VOYAGE. 'HE mackerel boats sailed slowly out But the gray gull's flight was landward, Strange whisperings were in the air; It came the swift-winged hurricane- Till the wild bird's nest and the fisher's cot And women wept, and watched and wept, And prayed for the night to wane; DOVER BEACH. HE sea is calm to-night, 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 Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched san Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling MATTHEW ARNOLD ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. THOU vast ocean! ever sounding sea! Like a huge animal, which, downward hurled And watched and prayed, though the setting sun Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies "A sail!" That sail is not for you; It slowly fades away. The sun may set; the moon may rise; Slow years roll by, and the solemn stars They have sailed away on a long, long voyage; SAM SLICK, IR. Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies. Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves Make music in earth's dark and winding caves, I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, BRYAN W. PROCTER (Barry Cornwall). |