A HYMN IN PRAYSE OF NEPTUNE.1
OF Neptune's empire lett us sing,
At whose commande the waves obey;
To whome the rivers tribute pay,
Downe the high mountains sliding;
To whome the scaly nation yeelds
Homage for the crystal fields
Wherein they dwell;
And every sea-god paies a gem
Yearly, out of hys watery cell,
To decke great Neptune's diadem,
The Tritons, dancing in a ring,
Before his palace gates doe make
The water with their echoes quake
Like the great thunder sounding.
The sea-nymphs chante their accents shrill;
And the sirens, taught to kill
With their sweete voyse,
Make every echoing rock reply,
Unto their gentle, murmuring noyse,
The prayse of Neptune's empery...
EARTH has not a plain
So boundless and so beautiful as thine,
The eagle's vision cannot take it in;
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half-way o'er it, like a wearied bird:
It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.
1 This song was written for the Gray's Inn masque, 1594, eight years after Campion was admitted to the Inn, and seven years before the appearance of his first book in English. He held a doctor's degree in medicine, and wrote learnèdly on counterpoint. He was the "Sweet Master Campion" of his own day, and had a considerable following.
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, ·
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose cars are dinn'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,-
ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence, and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that dwells in his tremendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thundering concert with the quiring winds.
But long as man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, beatific Sea!
"MIGHTY SEA! CAMELEON-LIKE THOU
Cameleon-like thou changest; but there's love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder sky-thy mistress. From her brow
Thou tak'st thy moods, and wear'st her colour on
Thy faithful bosom,-morning's milky white,
Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of éve;
And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,
Have such divine complexion, crispèd smiles,
Luxuriant heavings and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love's own Queen
Of old was fabled to have sprung from thee—
Creation's common !-which no human power
Can parcel or inclose. The lordliest floods
And cataracts, that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct or bound, are drops of dew
To thee, that could subdue the Earth itself,
And brook'st commandment from high Heaven alone
For marshalling thy waves.
"ROLL ON, THOU DEEP AND DARK, BLUE OCEAN."
ROLL on, thou deep and dark, blue Ocean-roll!
Then 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 depths 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.
The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys; and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into the yeast of waves, which mar
Alike th' Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since their shores obey
The stranger, slave or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou;-
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play:
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow;
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
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 sublimeThe image of Eternity-the throne
Of the invisible; even from out of thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
-THOSE trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen, above the illimitable plain,
Morning and night, and night on morning rise;
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
Where the loud roaring of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty wind
In melancholy loneliness, and swept
The desert of those ocean solitudes;
But, vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
The bellowing monster and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
Of kindliest human impulses respond.
'OCEAN, UNEQUAL PRESSED."
OCEAN, unequal pressed, with broken tide
And blind commotion heaves; while from the shore-
Eat into caverns by the restless wave-
And forest-rustling mountain, comes a voice
That, solemn-sounding, bids the world prepare.
Then issues forth the storm with sudden burst,
And hurls the whole precipitated air
Down in a torrent! On the passive main
Descends the ethereal force, and with strong gust
Turns from its bottom the discoloured deep.
Through the black night that sits immense around,
Lashed into foam, the fierce conflicting brine
Seems o'er a thousand raging waves to burn.
Meantime the mountain-billows to the clouds,
In dreadful tumult swelled, surge above surge,
Burst into chaos with tremendous roar;
And anchored navies from their stations drive,
Wild as the winds across the howling waste
Of mighty waters: now the inflated wave
Straining thy scale, and now impetuous shoot
Into the secret chambers of the deep,-
The wintry Baltic thundering o'er their head.
Emerging thence again, before the breath
Of full-exerted heaven, they wing their course,
And dart on distant coasts,-if some sharp rock,
Or shoal insidious, break not their career,
And in loose fragments fling them floating round.
JAMES THOMSON.
Look what immortal floods the sunset pours
Upon us! Mark how still-as though in dreams
Round-the once wild and terrible ocean seems!
How silent are the winds! No billow roars;
But all is tranquil as Elysian shores :
The silver margin which aye runneth round
The moon-enchanted sea hath here no sound;
Even echo speaks not on these radiant moors.
What! Is the giant of the ocean dead?-
Whose strength was all unmatched beneath the sun.
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