Oh, leave me here upon this beach to rove,

Mute listener to that sound so grand and lone !— A glorious sound, deep-drawn and strongly thrown, And reaching those on mountain heights above: To British cars-as who shall scorn to own?A tutelar fond voice, a saviour-tone of love! C. T. TURNER.

"METHINKS I FAIN WOULD LIE." METHINKS I fain would lie by the lone sea,

And hear the waters their white music weave.
Methinks it were a pleasant thing to grieve,
So that our sorrows might companioned be
By that strange harmony

Of winds and billows, and the living sound

Sent down from heaven when the thunder speaks Unto the listening shores and torrent creeks, When the swol'n sea doth try to burst its bound! B. W. PROCTER.

"I HEARD, OR SEEMED TO HEAR."

I HEARD, or seemed to hear, the chiding Sea
Say "Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?
Am I not always here?-thy summer home.
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?-
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?
Was ever building like my terraces?
Was ever couch magnificent as mine?
Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
A little hut suffices like a town.

I make your sculptured architecture vain-
Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,
And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.
Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes,
Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs,
Half-piled or prostrate,—and my newest slab
Older than all thy race.'

Behold the Sea !

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,

Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
Sea full of food; the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men,
Creating a sweet climate by its breath,
Washing our arms and griefs from memory;
And, in its 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! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

"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.

Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out
The exodus of nations. I disperse

Men to all shores that front the hoary main.
I, too, have arts and sorceries,—

Illusion dwells for ever with the wave.

I know what spells are laid,—leave me to deal
With credulous and imaginative man;

For, though he scoop my water in his palm,
A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.
Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,
I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,
To distant men, who must go there, or die."

EMERSON.

ITS WINDS, TIDES AND WATERS, ITS MYSTERY, MUSIC AND COLOURS

Methinks the wind has spoke aloud at land,-
A fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements.
If it hath ruffianed so upon the sea,

What ribs of oak, when mountains melt upon them,
Can hold the mortise?

SHAKESPEARE.

There the sea I found,

Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

SHELLEY.

Old Ocean is a mighty harmonist.

WORDSWORTH.