THE SEA. THE sea, the sea, the open sea, It runneth the earth's wide region round: 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, If a storm should come and awake the deep, I love, O how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, The waves were white, and red the morn, I have lived since then in calm and strife, With wealth to spend, and a power to range, MOUNTAIN SCENERY. THOU, Who would'st see the lovely and the wild Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for, on their tops, The beauty and the majesty of earth, Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget And down into the secrets of the glens And streams, that, with their bordering thickets, strive To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once, To separate its nations, and thrown down The mighty columns with which earth props heaven. BRYANT. FAR AT SEA. A THOUSAND miles from land are we, The sails are scatter'd abroad, like weeds, The hull, which all earthly strength disdains, Up and down! up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown, And, amidst the flashing and feathery foam, The stormy petrel finds a home,— A home, if such a place may be, For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air; And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young, and to teach them to spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing! O'er the deep! o'er the deep! [fish sleep, Where the whale, and the shark, and the swordOutflying the blast and the driving rain, The petrel telleth her tale-in vain ; Who bringeth him news of the storm unheard! Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing! THE OCEAN. ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! Ten 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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd,and unknown. 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 thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, 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 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. |