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thy fields

His steps are not upon thy paths,
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 thunderstrike 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 thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the 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 washed them power 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 wrinkles 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 sublime,

The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible ! even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

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It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.
I'm on the sea, I 'm on the sea,

I am where I would ever be,

With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.

If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, O, how I love to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest wind doth blow!
I never was on the dull, tame shore

But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest,
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,
As welcomed to life the ocean child.

I have lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a rover's life,

With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change:
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!

BARRY CORNWALL.

A HYMN OF THE SEA.

THE sea is mighty, but a mightier sways His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have scooped

His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy breath,

That moved in the beginning o'er his face,
Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves
To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall.
Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up,
As at the first, to water the great earth,
And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms
Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind,
And in the dropping shower with gladness hear
Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth
Over the boundless blue, where joyously
The bright crests of innumerable waves
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 toward 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 seaman climbs and furls the sail.

But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face

The blast that wakes the fury of the sea?
O God! thy justice makes the world turn pale,
When on the arméd fleet, that royally
Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite
Some city or invade some thoughtless realm,
Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks
Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the
sails

Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts
Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks
Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf,
Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed
In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed
By whirlpools or dashed dead upon the rocks.
Then stand the nations still with awe, and

pause

A moment from the bloody work of war.

These restless surges eat away the shores Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down, And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar In the green chambers of the middle sea, Where broadest spread the waters and the line Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush ; sweet airs

Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flow

ers,

Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look
On thy creation and pronounce it good.
Its valleys, glorious with their summer green,
Praise thee in silent beauty; and its woods
Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join
The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE SEA.

BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious;
Mild, majestic, foaming, free,
Over time itself victorious,
Image of eternity!

Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee,
See thy surface ebb and flow,
Yet attempt not to explore thee

In thy soundless depths below.
Whether morning's splendors steep thee
With the rainbow's glowing grace,
Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee,
"T is but for a moment's space.
Earth, her valleys and her mountains,
Mortal man's behests obey;
The unfathomable fountains

Scoff his search and scorn his sway.

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Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,

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Thus the pestilent Upas, the demon of trees,
Its boughs o'er the wilderness spreads,
And with livid contagion polluting the breeze,
Its mildewing influence sheds;

The birds on the wing, and the flowers in their beds,
Are slain by its venomous breath,

That darkens the noonday with death,
And pale ghosts of travellers wander around,
While their mouldering skeletons whiten the
ground.

Ah! why hath Jehovah, in forming the world, With the waters divided the land,

His ramparts of rocks round the continent hurled,
And cradled the deep in his hand,

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

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

While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail, There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan,

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Who traverse thy banishing waves,
The poor disinherited outcasts of man,
Whom Avarice coins into slaves.

From the homes of their kindred, their forefathers' 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;
But woe to the winds that propitiously breathe,
And waft them in safety to port,

Where the vultures and vampires of Mammon resort;

Where Europe exultingly drains

And the breezes that rock the light cradle of morn The life-blood from Africa's veins ;

Are sweet as the Phoenix's pyre.

O regions of beauty, of love and desire !

Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod, And spurns at his footstool the image of God!

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Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles,
More lovely than clouds in the west,

The blood of our ancestors nourished the tree;
From their tombs, from their ashes, it sprung;
Its boughs with their trophies are hung;
Their spirit dwells in it, and-hark! for it
spoke,

The voice of our fathers ascends from their oak.

"Ye Britons, who dwell where we conquered of old,

Who inherit our battle-field graves;

Though poor were your fathers, — gigantic and bold,

When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles, We were not, we could not be, slaves;

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As homeward my weary-winged Fancy extends
Her star-lighted course through the skies,
High over the mighty Atlantic ascends,
And turns upon Europe her eyes :

Ah me! what new prospects, new horrors arise ?
I see the war-tempested flood

All foaming, and panting with blood;
The panic-struck Ocean in agony roars,
Rebounds from the battle, and flies to his shores.

For Britannia is wielding the trident to-day,
Consuming her foes in her ire,

And hurling her thunder with absolute sway
From her wave-ruling chariots of fire.

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ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

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 hurled
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 as 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.

She triumphs; the winds and the waters con- The earth has naught of this: no chance or change

spire

To spread her invincible name;

The universe rings with her fame;

Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare
Give answer to the tempest-wakened air;
But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range

But the cries of the fatherless mix with her At will, and wound its bosom as they go :

Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow :

praise, And the tears of the widow are shed on her bays. But in their stated rounds the seasons come,

O Britain, dear Britain! the land of my birth;
O Isle most enchantingly fair!

And pass like visions to their wonted home;
And come again, and vanish; the young Spring
Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming;

Thou Pearl of the Ocean! thou Gem of the Earth! And Winter always winds his sullen horn,
O my Mother, my Mother, beware,

For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare!
O, let not thy birthright be sold
For reprobate glory and gold!

Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot,
They weigh down thy trunk, they will tear up
thy root,

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When the wild Autumn, with a look forlorn,
Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies
Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies.
O, wonderful thou art, great element,
And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent,
And lovely in repose! thy summer form
Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves
Make music in earth's dark and winding caves,

The root of thine oak, O my country! that I love to wander on thy pebbled beach,

stands

Rock-planted and flourishing free;

Marking the sunlight at the evening hour, And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach, Its branches are stretched o'er the uttermost lands, Eternity Eternity and Power. And its shadow eclipses the sea.

BARRY CORNWALL.

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