No, he reposes.

Now his toils are done;

More quiet than the bubbling brook is he. So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed, And sleep-how oft !-in things that gentlest be. B. W. PRocter.

"O THOU VAST OCEAN." 2

O THOU vast Ocean! Ever-sounding Sea!
Thou symbol of a drear immensity!

Thou thing that windest round the solid world
Like a huge animal; which, downward hurl'd
From the black clouds, lies weltering and alone,
Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone.
Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep
Is a giant's slumber, loud and deep.

Thou speakest in the east and in the west
At once; and on thy heavily-laden breast

Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life
Or motion, yet are moved and meet in strife.

Thou only, terrible Ocean, hast a power,
A will, a voice; and in thy wrathful hour,
When thou dost lift thine anger to the clouds,
A fearful and magnificent beauty shrouds

1

Thy broad, green forehead. If thy waves be driven
Backwards and forwards by the shifting wind,
How quickly dost thou thy great strength unbind,
And stretch thine arms, and war at once with Heaven!

1 66

Barry Cornwall"a school-fellow with Byron, the younger Peel, a great and a true lover of the sea, as pieces in this volume prove— was a romantic poet with an inclination to be classic. Scant justice has been done to him since his death in 1874. The following is from Swinburne's poem to his memory:

"Time takes them home that we loved, fair names and famous, To the soft long sleep, to the broad sweet bosom of death;

But the flower of their souls he shall not take away to shame us,

Nor the lips lack song for ever that now lack breath:

For with us shall the music and perfume, that die not, dwell;
Though the dead to our dead bid welcome, and us farewell."

He served articles to a solicitor at Lamb's "sweet Colne" in Wiltshire, and had the peculiar power of making all men love him; nearly every noted man of his day was his friend.

2 From "Marcian Colonna,'

Thou trackless and immeasurable main,
On thee no record ever lived again,

To meet the hand that writ it; live nor dead
Hath ever fathomed thy profoundest deeps,

Where haply the huge monster swells and sleeps,
King of his watery limit.

Oh! wonderful thou art, great element,
And fearful in thy spleeny humours bent,
And lovely in repose: Thy summer form
Is beautiful; and when thy silvery waves
Make music in earth's dark and winding caves,
I love to wander on thy pebbled beach,
Marking the sunlight at the evening hour,
And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach—
"Eternity, Eternity and Power.'

B. W. PROCTER.

"IT IS THE MIDNIGHT HOUR." 1

It is the midnight hour: The beauteous sea,
Calm as the cloudless heaven, the heaven discloses ;
While many a sparkling star, in quiet glee,

Far down within the watery sky reposes.

As if the ocean's heart were stirred

With inward life, a sound is heard,

Like that of dreamer murmuring in his sleep;

'Tis partly the billows, and partly the air

That lies like a garment floating fair

Above the happy deep.

The sea, I ween, cannot be fann'd

By evening freshness from the land,

For the land is far away;

But God hath will'd that the sky-borne breeze
In the centre of the loneliest seas

Should ever sport and play.

The mighty Moon, she sits above,
Encircled by a zone 2 of love-

1 These are the opening lines of the "Isle of Palms" (1812), a story in four cantos, wherein "Christopher North" showed that his love of the sea was as great as his fondness for lashing at English authors.

2 This seems to have been that "ring round the moon," which is generally seen only in fine weather, and is put down by seamen, the world over, to mean the immediate coming of less happy conditions for them and seldom, indeed, is the prognostication wrong. Wilson's

A zone of dim and tender light,

That makes her wakeful eye more bright:
She seems to shine with a sunny ray,
And the night looks like a mellow'd day.
The gracious mistress of the main
Hath now an undisturbed reign;

And from her silent throne looks down,
As upon children of her own,

On the waves that lend their gentle breast
In gladness for her couch of rest.

SUNRISE AT SEA.

JOHN WILSON.

THE interminable ocean lay beneath,
At depth immense,-not quiet as before,
For a faint breath of air, e'en at the height
On which I stood scarce felt, play'd over it;
Waking innumerous dimples on its face,

As though 'twere conscious of the splendid guest

That e'en then touched the threshold of heaven's gates, And smiled to bid him welcome.

Far away,

On either hand, the broad-curved beach stretched on;
And I could see the slow-paced waves advance
One after one, and spread upon the sands,
Making a slender edge of pearly foam
Just as they broke; then softly falling back,
Noiseless to me on that tall head of rock,
As it had been a picture, clear descried
Through optic tube, leagues off.

A tender mist
Was round th' horizon and along the vales;
But the hill-tops stood in a crystal air.

The cope of heaven was clear and deeply blue,
And not a cloud was visible. Toward the east
An atmosphere of golden light, that grew
Momently brighter, and intensely bright,
Proclaim'd th' approaching sun. Now, now he comes :
A dazzling point emerges from the sea:

It spreads, it rises,-now it seems a dome

use of the ring is but a single instance-dozens of which could be cited in this volume-of how even the learned landsman is apt to err when he goes 'out of his depth" in nautical matters and phenomena. Note how well this ring is used in "The Wreck of the Hesperus," page 169.

Of burning gold! Higher and rounder now
It mounts, it swells; now, like a huge balloon
Of light and fire, it rests upon the rim
Of waters,--lingers there a moment, then-
Soars up!

EDWIN ATHERSTONE.1

"BENEATH THEIR FEET A BURNISHED OCEAN LAY."

BENEATH their feet a burnished ocean lay,
Glittering in sunshine. Far down, like snow
Shook from the bosom of a wintery cloud,
And drifting on the wind in feathery flakes,
The sea-gulls sailed betwixt the earth and sky,-
Or, floating on the bosom of the deep,
Pursued the herring-shoal with dexterous aim.
Far, far away on the horizon's edge,

The white sails of the homeward-scudding ships
Gleamed like the lilies in a garden plot,
Or like the scattered shreds of fleecy cloud
Left by the Evening at the gate of Night,
To shimmer in the leaden-coloured sky,
And drink the splendour of the harvest-moon,
Their glancing breasts reflected from afar
The noonday sunlight.

CHARLES MACKAY.2

"THE SEA IS MIGHTY."

THE sea is mighty; but a mightier sways

His restless billows.

A hundred realms

Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind,
And in the drooping shower with gladness hear
The promise of the harvest. I look forth
Over the boundless blue, where joyously
The bright crests of innumerable waves

1 Atherstone attracted some attention in his time; he did a considerable amount of work, but as a whole it is far too high-flown for a day that is harking back to the realities of things as mother Earth will persist in making them. The above piece is from "A Midsummer Day's Dream" (1824). 2 See note to "When the Wind Blows Fair," p. 211.

Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands
Of a great multitude are upward flung
In acclamation. I behold the ships

Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle,
Or stemming towards far lands, or hastening home
From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze
That bears them, with the riches of the land
And treasure of dear lives; till, in the port,
The shouting seamen climb and furl the sails.

BRYANT.

THE SEA: IN-SHORE.

THERE comes to me a vision of the day

When first I made acquaintance with the seaRolling and rushing up the beach to me, Then tumbling back, a giant in his play: So, with arched neck again, in foam and spray, Hoarse-voiced, he leaps !-recoils as speedily Leaving toy-shells, his shining legacy,Spars, pebbles, coral-weeds of brightest ray. Anon the many-mooded thing would sleep, In lamb-like stillness, all a summer noon, While sun-stars quivered on the hollow deep; Then wake, refreshed from slumber; and how soon, With wet and windy manes, toss silver-bright

A wilderness of motion and of light.

E. H. BRodie.

"WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA!"

WITH husky-haughty lips, O sea!

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal; Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun;

Thy brooding scowl and murk-thy unloos'd hurricanes; Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all eternity in thy content,

(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest, no less could make thee :);