Sea, Rivers and Oceans

I’ve known rivers:

great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies. And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

 

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

 

The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.

Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river .

How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish’d to her cock, her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.

Dark-heaving—boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the northwest died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

 

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers.

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow— Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

There Leviathan Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch’d like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

What seas what shores what gray rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog What images return O my daughter.

Countless chuckles of the waves of the sea.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

Now the wild white horses play,

We were the first that ever burst

What the waves were always saying.

Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

Alone, alone, all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea.

The sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o’er the sea Off shot the specter bark.

The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.