SOURCE: “The Large Landscape: A Study of Certain Images in Ralegh,” in Essays in Criticism, Vol. V, No. 3, July, 1955, pp. 197-213.

In the following essay, Horner discusses sea and earth imagery in The Ocean to Cynthia.

It is at first a matter for surprise that there is so little of the sea in Ralegh's poetry. It is true that since the publication of The Successors of Drake by Sir Julian Corbett, there has been a tendency to discredit Ralegh's seamanship, to look askance at the famous trunkful of books, to find him incompetent and a bungler. But putting his incompetence at its highest, we still face the fact that Ralegh had more first-hand experience of the sea than any other Elizabethan poet, and far more knowledge of ships and navigation—I doubt if any other English poet ever designed a battleship. There is little of this knowledge and...