VI

Dauntless, triumphant, reckless of alarms,

O Queen that laughest Time and Fear to scorn,

Death, like a bridegroom, tosses in thine arms.

The rapture of your fellowship is borne

Like music on the wind. I hear the blare,

The calling of the undesisting horn,

And tremors as of trumpets on the air.

_Richard Hovey_

[3] Extracts from “Seaward,” an Elegy.

_The World is Too Much With Us_

The World is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours

And are up-gather’d now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,--

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

_William Wordsworth_

_Sunrise_

Day!

Faster and more fast,

O’er night’s brim, day boils at last:

Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim

Where spurting and suppressed it lay,

For not a froth-flake touched the rim

Of yonder gap in the solid gray

Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;

But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,

Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

_Robert Browning_

_Song of the Sea_

The song of the sea was an ancient song

In the days when the earth was young;

The waves were gossiping loud and long

Ere mortals had found a tongue;

The heart of the waves with wrath was wrung

Or soothed to a siren strain,

As they tossed the primitive isles among

Or slept in the open main.

Such was the song and its changes free,

Such was the song of the sea.

The song of the sea took a human tone

In the days of the coming of man;

A mournfuller meaning swelled her moan,

And fiercer her riots ran;

Because that her stately voice began

To speak of our human woes;

With music mighty to grasp and span

Life’s tale and its passion-throes.

Such was the song as it grew to be,

Such was the song of the sea.

The song of the sea was a hungry sound

As the human years unrolled;

For the notes were hoarse with the doomed and drowned,

Or choked with a shipwreck’s gold;

Till it seemed no dirge above the mould

So sorry a story said

As the midnight cry of the waters old

Calling above their dead.

Such is the song and its threnody,

Such is the song of the sea.

The song of the sea is a wondrous lay,

For it mirrors human life;

It is grave and great as the judgment day,

It is torn with the thought of strife;

Yet under the stars it is smooth and rife

With love-lights everywhere,

When the sky has taken the deep to wife

And their wedding-day is fair--

Such is the ocean’s mystery,

Such is the song of the sea.

_Richard Burton_

_Farewell_

Not soon shall I forget--a sheet

Of golden water, cold and sweet,

The young moon with her head in veils

Of silver, and the nightingales.

A wain of hay came up the lane--

O fields I shall not walk again,

And trees I shall not see, so still

Against a sky of daffodil!

Fields where my happy heart had rest,

And where my heart was heaviest,

I shall remember them at peace

Drenched in moon-silver like a fleece.

The golden water sweet and cold,

The moon of silver and of gold,

The dew upon the gray grass-spears,

I shall remember them with tears.

_Katherine Tynan_

_The Return_

I will go back to the great sweet mother,

Mother and lover of men, the sea.

I will go down to her, I and none other,

Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me;

Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast;

O fair white mother, in days long past

Born without sister, born without brother,

Set free my soul as thy soul is free.

O fair green-girdled mother of mine,

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,

Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,

Thy large embraces are keen like pain.

Save me and hide me with all thy waves,

Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,

Those pure cold populous graves of thine,

Wrought without hand in a world without stain.

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,

Change as the winds change, veer in the tide;

My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,

I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;

Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were,

Filled full with life to the eyes and hair,

As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips

With splendid summer and perfume and pride.

This woven raiment of nights and days,

Were it once cast off and unwound from me,

Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,

Alive and aware of thy ways and thee;

Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,

Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam,

A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,

A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.

Fair mother, fed with the lives of men,

Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say

Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again;

Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.

But death is the worst that comes of thee;

Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,

But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,

Having given us love, hast thou taken away?

O tender-hearted, O perfect lover,

Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.

Thy hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,

Shall they not vanish away and apart?

But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;

Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;

Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;

From the first thou wert, from the end thou art.

_Algernon Charles Swinburne_

_The Port o’ Heart’s Desire_

Down around the quay they lie, the ships that sail to sea,

On shore the brown-cheeked sailormen they pass the jest with me,

But soon their ships will sail away with winds that never tire,

And there’s one that will be sailing to the Port o’ Heart’s Desire.

The Port o’ Heart’s Desire, and it’s, oh, that port for me,

And that’s the ship that I love best of all that sail the sea;

Its hold is filled with memories, its prow it points away

To the Port o’ Heart’s Desire, where I roamed a boy at play.

Ships that sail for gold there be, and ships that sail for fame,

And some were filled with jewels bright when from Cathay they came,

But give me still yon white sail in the sunset’s mystic fire,

That the running tides will carry to the Port o’ Heart’s Desire.

It’s you may have the gold and fame, and all the jewels, too,

And all the ships, if they were mine, I’d gladly give to you,

I’d give them all right gladly, with their gold and fame entire,

If you would set me down within the Port o’ Heart’s Desire.

Oh, speed you, white-winged ship of mine, oh, speed you to the sea,

Some other day, some other tide, come back again for me;

Come back with all the memories, the joys and e’en the pain,

And take me to the golden hills of boyhood once again.

_John S. McGroarty_

_Sea-Urge_

Oh, to feel the tremble of a ship beneath my feet again,

Now that April’s urge is running riot in the tide,

Where gray gull dips to white gull and the salt spray leaps to meet them

Out across blue water where the tall ships ride.

Freshets in the mountain streams and floods along the river

Go rushing down to join the tossing tumult of the sea.

And the April urge that drives them sets the sailor’s heart aquiver

With the joy of ocean madness when the sails flap free.

_Unknown_

_The Ocean_

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean--roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin--his control

Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depth with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields

Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray,

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth:--there let him lay.

* * * * *

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 wantoned 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.

_Lord Byron_

_A Song of Desire_

Thou dreamer with the million moods,

Of restless heart like me,

Lay thy white hands against my breast

And cool its pain, O Sea!

O wanderer of the unseen paths,

Restless of heart as I,

Blow hither, from thy caves of blue,

Wind of the healing sky!

O treader of the fiery way,

With passionate heart like mine,

Hold to my lips thy healthful cup

Brimmed with its blood-red wine!

O countless watchers of the night,

Of sleepless heart like me,

Pour your white beauty in my soul,

Till I grow calm as ye!

O Sea, O Sun, O Wind and Stars,

(O hungry heart that longs!)

Feed my starved lips with life, with love,

And touch my tongue with songs!

_Frederic Lawrence Knowles_

_A Sea Change_

Heavy with unshed tears--weary with pain,

At last life brought me to the sea again,

Where beauty spoke above my grief’s demands.

I heard the singing surf--watched sea-birds fly;

I saw a pine-tree etched against the sky,

And crushed the bay-leaves in my tired hands.

Loveliness filled my spirit like a cup:

A sense of healing and of peace welled up

Which but the sea to the sea-lover brings.

I did not hope; I did not even pray;

But as upon that sun-warmed rock I lay

Joy stirred within me with a lift of wings.

_Dorothy Peace_

_Twilight At Sea_

The twilight hours, like birds, flew by,

As lightly and as free,

Ten thousand stars were in the sky,

Ten thousand on the sea;

For every wave, with dimpled face,

That leaped upon the air,

Had caught a star in its embrace,

And held it trembling there.

_Amelia C. Welby_

_Sea-Song_

To-day was a sea-gull day, dear heart, to-day was a sea-gull day,

With a touch of wind, and the beat of surf, and the breath

of the driven spray

Blue of the sky, and blue of the sea, and the white clouds

scudding far,

And my longings swept to the sky-line dim like moths to a candle star.

To-day was a sea-gull day, dear heart, that sparkled with

sun-flecked blue,

But it bound my heart with a wave-linked chain and bore

it away from you.

It stole it far from my hearth and you, though we two sat

side by side,

For my heart it tugged like an anchored ship that strains

with the seaward tide.

And when we wandered back home, dear heart, so soberly

wandered home,

My eyes were blind with the sun-washed gold, and dim

with the lunging foam,

And my heart came swaggering on beside, from the wake of

the distant ships,

With the lilt of a deep sea chanty-strain like wine on its

reckless lips!

_Martha Haskell Clark_

_Deep Down_

The lights are on the harbor,

And the ships at anchor ride--

Blow she high, blow she low, let’er blow!

We’re outward bound at dawning

With the turning of the tide,

And Davy Jones is waiting down below,

Old Davy Jones is watching down below, below, below,

Down deep, deep down, down below.

Now, here’s to hearty weather,

And here’s to starry skies--

Up she goes, down she goes, bullies, Oh!

And here’s to all the ladies,

And damn old Davy’s eyes,

Long may we keep him waiting down below!

Old thieving, crimping Davy, down below, below, below,

Down deep, deep down, down below.

At Rio, Hull or Sidney,

I’ll meet you all again,

So here’s good luck, my bullies, ere we go,

Or I’ll find a berth ’longside you

In the port o’ missing men,

Where Davy Jones is waiting down below,

Where Davy Jones is watching down below, below, below,

Down deep, deep down, down below.

_James Stuart Montgomery_

_The Winds of Heaven_

“_Life is sweet, brother._”

“_Do you think so?_”

“_Think so? There’s Night and Day, brother, both sweet things; sun,

moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; There’s likewise a wind on

the heath._

_Life is very sweet brother._”