Sea, Rivers and Oceans

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are.”

The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses Its hints of earlier and other creation: The starfish, the hermit crab, the whale’s backbone; The pools where it offers to our curiosity The more delicate algae and the sea anemone. It tosses up our losses, the torn seine, The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices.

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?” They sailed away, for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose.

The great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,

 

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls.

Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a sieve.

And bade betwixt their shores to be

When the sea was calm all ships alike showed mastership in floating.

The houses are all gone under the sea.

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

 

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

 

Pacific leans on the land, Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins.

Of the four elements water is the second in weight and the second in respect of mobility. It is never at rest until it unites with the sea

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 wanton’d with thy breakers.

In her sepulcher there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!

Who hath desired the sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded.

All in the Downs the fleet was moored,

Athene sent them a following breeze, a strong west wind that whistled over the wine-dark sea.

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

 

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.