[Written at Scarborough, in the Summer of 1805.J

Ah! why hath Jehovah, in forming the world,

ALL hail to the ruins, the rocks, and the shores! With the waters divided the land,
Thou wide-rolling Ocean, all hail !

His ramparts of rocks round the continent hurled,

Now brilliant with sunbeams and dimpled with And cradled the deep in his hand,

oars,

Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,

If man may transgress his eternal command,
And leap o'er the bounds of his birth,

While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail, To ravage the uttermost earth,

And the silver-winged sea-fowl on high,

Like meteors bespangle the sky,

Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride,

Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.

And violate nations and realms that should be
Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea?

There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan,
Who traverse thy banishing waves,

From the tumult and smoke of the city set free, The poor disinherited outcasts of man,
With eager and awful delight,

Whom Avarice coins into slaves.

From the homes of their kindred, their fore-
fathers' graves,

Love, friendship, and conjugal bliss,
They are dragged on the hoary abyss ;
The shark hears their shrieks, and, ascending
to-day,

Demands of the spoiler his share of the prey.

Then joy to the tempest that whelms them beneath,

And makes their destruction its sport;

And the breezes that rock the light cradle of But woe to the winds that propitiously breathe,

morn

Are sweet as the Phoenix's pyre.

O regions of beauty, of love and desire!
O gardens of Eden! in vain

Placed far on the fathomless main,

Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth,
When pure was her heart and unbroken her truth.

And waft them in safety to port,

Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon

resort;

Where Europe exultingly drains
The life-blood from Africa's veins ;
Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod,
And spurns at his footstool the image of God !

Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,
Shoulder the broken tide away,

The night-wind warns me back once more
To where, my native hill-tops o'er,
Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset
sky!

So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!
I bear with me

No token stone nor glittering shell,

But long and oft shall Memory tell

Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the

sea.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

OCEAN.

GREAT Ocean! strongest of creation's sons,
Unconquerable, unreposed, untired,
That rolled the wild, profound, eternal bass
In nature's anthem, and made music such
As pleased the ear of God! original,
Unmarred, unfaded work of Deity!
And unburlesqued by mortal's puny skill;
From age to age enduring, and unchanged,
Majestical, inimitable, vast,

Loud uttering satire, day and night, on each
Succeeding race, and little pompous work
Of man; unfallen, religious, holy sea!
Thou bowedst thy glorious head to none, fearedst

Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July:

cleft and cave.

What heed I of the dusty land

And noisy town?

I see the mighty deep expand

From its white line of glimmering sand

To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down!

In listless quietude of mind,

I yield to all

The change of cloud and wave and wind
And passive on the flood reclined,

;

Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men ;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
Rich are the sea-gods :- who gives gifts but they?
They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:
They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,
Wealth to the cunning artist who can work
This matchless strength. Where shall he find,
O waves !

I wander with the waves, and with them rise A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

and fall.

But look, thou dreamer!
In shadow lie;

-wave and shore

I with my hammer pounding evermore
The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,
Strewing my bed, and, in another age,
Rebuild a continent of better men.