His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 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. It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, 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, But I loved the great sea more and more, 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, 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, In acclamation. I behold the ships home From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face The blast that wakes the fury of the sea? sails Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts 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 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale, O gardens of Eden! in vain Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth, When pure was her heart and unbroken her truth. But now the fair rivers of Paradise wind Thus the pestilent Upas, the demon of trees, The birds on the wing, and the flowers in their beds, That darkens the noonday with death, Ah! why hath Jehovah, in forming the world, With the waters divided the land, His ramparts of rocks round the continent hurled, If man may transgress his eternal command, While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail, There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan, And the silver-winged sea-fowl on high, Like meteors bespangle the sky, Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride, Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide. From the tumult and smoke of the city set free, From the crest of the mountain I gaze upon thee, And moves on thy waters, wherever they roll, From the day-darting zone to the night-shadowed pole. My spirit descends where the day-spring is born, Where the billows are rubies on fire, Who traverse thy banishing waves, From the homes of their kindred, their fore. fathers' graves, Love, friendship, and conjugal bliss, Demands of the spoiler his share of the prey. Then joy to the tempest that whelms them beneath, 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! The hour is approaching, -a terrible hour! In a moment entombed in the horrible void, Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles, The blood of our ancestors nourished the tree; 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 When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles, We were not, we could not be, slaves; No-Father of mercy! befriend the opprest; As homeward my weary-winged Fancy extends Ah me! what new prospects, new horrors arise? All foaming, and panting with blood; Tor Britannia is wielding the trident to-day, And hurling her thunder with absolute sway But firm as our rocks, and as free as our waves, -- In the shipwreck of nations we stood up alone, JAMES MONTGOMERY. ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. O THOU vast Ocean! ever-sounding Sea! 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 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, And pass like visions to their wonted home; O Britain, dear Britain! the land of my birth; And come again, and vanish; the young Spring Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot, They weigh down thy trunk, they will tear up thy root, Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming; The root of thine oak, O my country! that I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, 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. |