A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an eagle caged, I pine
On this dull, unchanging shore:
Oh! give me the flashing brine,
The spray and the tempest’s roar!
Once more on the deck I stand
Of my own swift-gliding craft:...
Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep;
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.
Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten...
From “The Course of Time,” Book I.
GREAT Ocean! strongest of creation’s sons,
Unconquerable, unreposed, untired,
That rolled the wild, profound, eternal bass
In nature’s anthem, and made music such
As pleased the ear of God! original,
Unmarred, unfaded work of Deity!
And unburlesqued by mortal’s puny skill;
From age to age enduring...
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...
A Life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep;
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an eagle caged I pine
On this dull, unchanging shore:
O, give me the flashing brine,
The spray and the tempest’s roar!
Once more on the deck I stand,
Of my own swift-gliding craft:...
From “Alastor”; Preface
“Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.”—Confessions of Saint Augustine.
EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With...
