As though the infant storm had rent
The mighty womb that gave him birth;
And, having swept the firmament,
Was now in fierce career for earth!

On earth 'twas yet all calm around—
A pulseless silence, dread, profound,
More awful than the tempest's sound.

The driver steer'd for Ormuz' bowers,
And moored his skiff till calmer hours;
The sea-birds, with portentous screech,
Flew fast to land: Upon the beach
The pilot oft had paus'd, with glance
Turn'd upward to that wild expanse.

Moore.

PATROLLING BARNEGAT.

WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running; Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering;

Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing;

Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing; Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, In beachy slush and sand spits of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,

Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing.

(That in the distance! Is that a wreck? Is the red signal flaring?)

Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,

Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting; Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,

A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,

That savage trinity warily watching.

WHITMAN.

THE EQUINOX.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks.

From Bermuda's reefs; from the edges
Of sunken ledges

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas:

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves and reaches

Of sandy beaches

All have found repose again.

LONGFELLOW.

SWEET AND LOW.

SWEET and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea;
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea.

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon and blow,

Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest on mother's breast,—

Father will come to thee soon:

Father will come to his babe in the nest,-
Silver sails all out of the west,

Under the silver moon:

Sleep, my little one; sleep, my pretty one,-sleep.

TENNYSON.

"YON' TIDES WITH CEASELESS SWELL." YON' tides with ceaseless swell! yon' power that does this work!

Yon' unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread,

Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from different stars to us? what Sirius'?-what Capella's?

What central heart-and you the pulse-vivifies all? What boundless aggregate of all?

What subtle indirection and insignificance in you? What clue to all in you? What fluid, vast identity,

Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as sailing in a ship?

Last of ebb, and daylight waning,

Scented sea-cool landward; making, smells of sedge and salt incoming,

With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,

Many a muffled confession, many a sob and whisper'd word,

As of speakers far or hid.

How they sweep down and out! How they mutter ! Poets unnamed-artists, greatest of any, with cherished last designs,

Love's unresponse, a chorus of age's complaints, hope's last words,

Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and never again return.

On to oblivion then!

On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!
On for your time, ye furious debauché !

And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb;

Nor you, ye lost designs alone-nor failures, aspirations;

I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again-duly the hinges turning,

Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, Weaving from you, from Sleep, Light, Death itself, The rhythmus of Birth Eternal.

Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing;

Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,

All throbs, dilates-the farms, woods, streets of cities, workmen at work.

Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing, steamers' pennants of smoke-and under the forenoon sunFreighted with human lives, gaily the outward-bound, gaily the inward-bound,

Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself,

In ever crest some undulating light or shade, some retrospect.

Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:

Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me

the same,

The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song. WHITMAN.

"TALL IDA'S SUMMIT.1"

TALL Ida's summit now more distant grew,
And Jove's high hill was rising to the view;
When on the larboard quarter they descry
A liquid column towering shoot on high.

1 It appears to be pretty plain that in this description of a waterspout at sea Falconer was drawing on his own experience.

The foaming base the angry whirlwinds sweep,
Where curling billows rouse the fearful deep.
Still round and round the fluid vortex flies,
Scattering dim night and horror through the skies!
This vast phenomenon, whose lofty head

In heaven immersed, embracing clouds o'erspread,
In spiral motion first, as seamen deem,

Swells when the raging whirlwind sweeps the stream.
(The swift volution and the enormous train
Let sages versed in Nature's lore explain.)
The horrid apparition still draws nigh,

And, white with foam, the whirling billows fly!
The guns are primed; the vessel northward veers,
Till her black battery on the column bears:
The nitre's fired; and, while the dreadful sound
Convulsive shakes the slumbering air around,
The watery volume, trembling to the sky,
Bursts down a dreadful deluge from on high!
Th' expanding ocean, trembling as it fell
Rolling in hills, disclosed th' abyss of hell.
But soon, this transient undulation o'er,
The sea subsided,—whirlwinds raged no more.

FALCONER.

"AFTER THE SEA-SHIP."

AFTER the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,

After the white-grey sails taut to their spars and

ropes;

Below, a myriad-myriad waves hastening, lifting up

their necks,

Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship;

Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying;

Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous

waves,

Toward that whirling current-laughing and buoyant, with curves—

Where the great vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;

Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing: