The raging of our sea!
The defiant roar of its attack on rock, cliff and shore,
Spreads the contagion of a mighty courage,
Springing from the resolute deep.
* * * * *
The voices from our sea!
Like an unending processional stealing on the soul from the
double blue afar,
The eternal bass of nature's choir,
A power-inspiring undertone from profundity.
* * * * *
The laboring and heaving of her waves
Like the toiling of all humanity at its task,
Braces the will with the story
Of our faithful ocean's endless day.
* * * * *
O, great Pacific! Often calm as a sea of glass,
Who durs't say that thou cans't not live
And bestir thyself with boisterous life;
That thou cans't not with growing fury hugely to thy defense
arise,
When rebuffed by wind, by rock and cliff.
Thy deep is not an incessant, idle sleep!
Thou cans't heave and leap and live with ponderous life,
Until thy waves, up from the bottom turning, are all afoam
with terrible rage,
Their salty crests mounting on tangled spray
And raining back to sea a million opals.
* * * * *
We love our sea and thy reserve of strength,
For thou art indeed the favorite of our God,
For when the Son of Man spoke to the snarling waves,
Thou of all waters didst best obey and heed the Master's
mandate, "Peace be still."
But He commanded not eternal quite and thou art somewhat
falsely famed.
For when necessity's hour arrives,
Thou with all violent seas canst throb from deepest heart;
With unrestrained power plunging to climb the skys, crushing
against the rocks--
Sublimely tempestuous, majestic in rage, in fury glorious!
* * * * *
And after the waters' landward assault,
To-day we can better ascend to observe the ocean's peace.
And here, great Sea!--
How naturally hovers infinity over that hemispheric calm,
As from this rocky, shore-projecting cliff
We behold thy endless expanse over meridians and the world,
into and behind the sky--vast, serene, stupendous.
And as we gaze and worship and pray, drenched with
omnipotence,
We dare with highest emotions declare
That God, not once but always, walks the seas.
* * * * *
O life giving fount, a resurrecting breeze,
We cling to our sea, an army of men in cities and fields, on
streams and on hills,
Because thou dost live and let live.
For daily thy breath kisses our shores with beauty and life,
Thy varying moods are an unspeakable comfort to all manly
souls.
For thy grandeur holds an invisible gate of gold,
Through which sails a celestial mariner, the spirit of our
Father, God.
* * * * *
O visitors to these enchanted shores,
Join the brotherhood of the brothers of the sea--
Not dreamers, but heroic men,
Who love our rock-ribbed, templed hills and gigantic trees,
but better yet, our sea!
Take the shoes from off thy feet,
For here thou art on holy ground before nature's truest
Angelus,
To feel the awe of power, to think as deep as truth,
And leave a noble soul to uplift the homes of friends.
* * * * *
And deep-eyed patriots,
On every shore and from every inland city, vale and hill,
Look out and up, and live!
In spirit journey abroad over latitudes and longitudes, the
equator and the sphere,
To mingle with the vision'd souls of men who gaze far out on
our Pacific sea
Toward the slowly rising essential Republic of the world.
* * * * *
Fear not, move out in ship, in thought and plan--
Brave men, move out!
For on the waters of the Earth's vast deeps brotherhood has
faith in Fatherhood.
And the God who bound together
The colonies on our New England shores
Will bind together the nations about the seas,
Through fearless men of faith moving toward the best
The alluring best that is still to be.
"The fact that man has discovered no celestial body which contains
elements other than those of the earth is more than a hint of the unity
of creation" and its movement towards a single purpose.--Adapted from
Josiah Strong.