Or view the lord of the unerring
bow,
The god of life, and poesy,
and light.—
The sun in human limbs arrayed,
and brow
All radiant from his triumph
in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot,—the
arrow bright
With an immortal’s vengeance;
in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain,
and might
And majesty, flash their full
lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
But in his delicate form—a
dream of love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph,
whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover
from above,
And maddened in that vision—are
exprest
All that ideal beauty ever
blessed
The mind within its most unearthly
mood,
When each conception was a
heavenly guest,
A ray of immortality, and
stood,
Starlike, around, until they gathered
to a god!
Childe Harold, Canto IV. LORD BYRON.
SEA.
Ocean! great image of eternity,
And yet of fleeting time, of change, unrest,
Thou vast and wondrous realm of mystery,
Of thy great teachings too is man possessed.
Type of God’s boundless might, the
here and there
Uniting, thou dost with a righteous fear
Man’s heart ennoble, awe, and purify,
As in thy mighty, multitudinous tones
echoes of God roll by.
Nature and Man. J.W. MILES.
What are the wild waves saying,
Sister, the whole day long,
That ever amid our playing
I hear but their low, lone
song?
What are the Wild Waves Saying? J.B.
CARPENTER.
The land is dearer for the sea,
The ocean for the shore.
On the Beach. L. LARCOM.
Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea. The Ocean. J. MONTGOMERY.
There
the sea I found
Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber
bound.
The Revolt of Islam, Canto I. P.B.
SHELLEY.
And there, where the smooth, wet
pebbles be,
The waters gurgle longingly,
As if they fain would seek the shore,
To be at rest from the ceaseless roar,
To be at rest forevermore.
The Sirens. J.R. LOWELL.
I
am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s
foam, to sail
Where’er the surge may sweep, the
tempest’s breath prevail.
Don Juan, Canto III. LORD BYRON.
Watching the waves with all their
white crests dancing
Come, like thick-plumed squadrons, to the shore
Gallantly bounding.
Julian. SIR A. HUNT.
Once more upon the waters! yet once
more!
And the waves behind beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider.
Don Juan, Canto III. LORD BYRON.
I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him.
The Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.