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THE SEA.

R

The Ocean.

OLL 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, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where 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 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.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne like thy bubbles onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers, they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here. -Lord Byron (Childe Harold).

O

Address to the Ocean.

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 dark 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 deep.
Thou speakest in the east and in the west
At once, and on thy heavily laden breast

Fleets come and go, and shapes that have no life Or motion, yet are moved and meet in strife.

The earth has naught of this: no chance or change
Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare
Give answer to the tempest-wakened air;
But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants range
At will, and wound its bosom as they go:
Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow:
But in their stated rounds the seasons come,
And pass like visions to their wonted home;
And come again, and vanish; the young spring
Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming;
And winter always winds his sullen horn,
When the wild autumn, with a look forlorn,

Dies in his stormy manhood; and the skies
Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summer flies.
O, wonderful thou art, great element,
And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent;
And lovely in repose! thy summer form

Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves

Make music in earth's dark and winding caves,

I love to wander on thy pebbled beach,
Marking the sunlight at the evening hour,
And harken to the thoughts thy waters teach,-
Eternity Eternity-and Power.

-Bryan W. Procter (Barry Cornwall).

THE

Grandeur of the Ocean.

'HE most fearful and impressive exhibitions of power known to our globe, belong to the ocean. The volcano, with its ascending flame and falling torrents of fire, and the earthquake, whose footstep is on the ruin of cities, are circumscribed in the desolating range of their visitations. But the ocean, when it once rouses itself in its coainless strength, shakes a thousand shores with its storm and thunder. Navies of oak and iron are tossed in mockery from its crest, and armaments, manned by the strength and courage of millions, perish among its bubbles.

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D

The Coral Grove.

EEP in the wave is a coral grove,

Where the purple mullet and gold fish rove; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with falling dew, But in bright and changeful beauty shine Far down in the green and grassy brine. The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow: From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow;
The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and the waves are absent there,
Aud the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air:
There with its waving blade of green,
The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen

To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter:
There was a light and easy motion
The fan coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea;
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,

Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the waves his own:

And when the ship from his fury flies,
When the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the recks on the shore,
Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.
-James Gates Percival.

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