Sea, Rivers and Oceans

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"Onward!"- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er!
"No more-- no more-- no more,"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my hours are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.

Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow!--
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!


1834

In youth's spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound.
And the tall pines that tower'd around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot — as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright —
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin'd,
Springing from a darken'd mind.
Death was in that poison'd wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild'ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake.


1827

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfum'd sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.

Lo ! in that little window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The folded scroll within thy hand —
A Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy land !


1831

Dim vales— and shadowy floods—
And cloudy—looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane—
Again— again— again—
Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places—
And they put out the star—light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon—dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down— still down— and down,
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be—
O'er the strange woods— o'er the sea—
Over spirits on the wing—
Over every drowsy thing—
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light—
And then, how deep!— O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like— almost anything—
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before—
Videlicet, a tent—
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never—contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.


1829

Close to the waves of the sea of Vigo
I come to remember a friend.
Birds shed feathers at the horizon
and the feathers, water from a spring
in Vigo, on the seaweeds
of the friend announce his delay.
From beyond comes, light as feathers,
the pain I do not want to lament.
But the svagulls fill with mist
the depth of my sorrow,
when, on the shores of the sea of Vigo
I come to remember a friend.

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God's throne should stand.
'He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height.'
Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.

I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw,
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

ROME.

The sea is flecked with bars of grey,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.

Etched clear upon the pallid sand
Lies the black boat: a sailor boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy
With laughing face and gleaming hand.

And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.

A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

With ships the sea was sprinkled
WITH ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,
Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;
Some lying fast at anchor in the road,
Some veering up and down, one knew not why.
A goodly vessel did I then espy
Come like a giant from a haven broad;
And lustily along the bay she strode,
Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.
The ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
Yet I pursued her with a lover's look;
This ship to all the rest did I prefer:
When will she turn, and whither? She will brook
No tarrying; where she comes the winds must stir:
On went she, and due north her journey took.

By the Seaside
The sun is couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest,
And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest;
Air slumbers--wave with wave no longer strives,
Only a heaving of the deep survives,
A tell-tale motion! soon will it be laid,
And by the tide alone the water swayed.
Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild
Of light with shade in beauty reconciled--
Such is the prospect far as sight can range,
The soothing recompence, the welcome change.
Where, now, the ships that drove before the blast,
Threatened by angry breakers as they passed;
And by a train of flying clouds bemocked;
Or, in the hollow surge, at anchor rocked
As on a bed of death? Some lodge in peace,
Saved by His care who bade the tempest cease;
And some, too heedless of past danger, court
Fresh gales to waft them to the far-off port
But near, or hanging sea and sky between,
Not one of all those winged powers is seen,
Seen in her course, nor 'mid this quiet heard;
Yet oh! how gladly would the air be stirred
By some acknowledgment of thanks and praise,
Soft in its temper as those vesper lays
Sung to the Virgin while accordant oars
Urge the slow bark along Calabrian shores;
A sea-born service through the mountains felt
Till into one loved vision all things melt:
Or like those hymns that soothe with graver sound
The gulfy coast of Norway iron-bound;
And, from the wide and open Baltic, rise
With punctual care, Lutherian harmonies.
Hush, not a voice is here! but why repine,
Now when the star of eve comes forth to shine
On British waters with that look benign?
Ye mariners, that plough your onward way,
Or in the haven rest, or sheltering bay,
May silent thanks at least to God be given
With a full heart; "our thoughts are 'heard' in heaven."

The White Birds

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you!
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!

The Nineteenth Century And After

THOUGH the great song return no more
There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave.

The Meditation Of The Old Fisherman

YOU waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were more gay,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the-cart
That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.
And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar
Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,
Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

The Ship Starting

LO! THE unbounded sea!
On its breast a Ship starting, spreading all her sails--an ample
Ship, carrying even her moonsails;
The pennant is flying aloft, as she speeds, she speeds so stately-below,
emulous waves press forward,
They surround the Ship, with shining curving motions, and foam.

Patroling Barnegat

WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, 10
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.

In Cabin'd Ships At Sea

IN cabin'd ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves--the large imperious


waves--In such,
Or some lone bark, buoy'd on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under

many a star at night,
By sailors young and old, haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read,
In full rapport at last.


Here are our thoughts--voyagers' thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be
said; 10
The sky o'erarches here--we feel the undulating deck beneath our

feet,
We feel the long pulsation--ebb and flow of endless motion;
The tones of unseen mystery--the vague and vast suggestions of the

briny world--the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy


rhythm,
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim, are all here,
And this is Ocean's poem.


Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether--purpos'd I know
not whither--yet ever full of faith, 20
Consort to every ship that sails--sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love--(Dear mariners! for you I fold


it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart
the imperious waves!
Chant on--sail on--bear o'er the boundless blue, from me, to every
shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.

Had I the Choice

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
Or Shakespeare's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson's fair ladies,
Meter or wit the best, or choice conceit to weild in perfect rhyme, delight of singers;
These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,
Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
And leave its odor there.

As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.


The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor rhyme--nor the classics--nor perfume of foreign court, or indoor


library;
But an odor I'd bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in
Maine--or breath of an Illinois prairie,
With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia, or Tennessee--or from Texas

uplands, or Florida's glades,
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite; 10
And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound,
That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world.

And for thy subtler sense, subtler refrains, O Union!
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee--mind-formulas fitted
for thee--real, and sane, and large as these and thee;
Thou, mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew--thou


transcendental Union!
By thee Fact to be justified--blended with Thought;
Thought of Man justified--blended with God:
Through thy Idea--lo! the immortal Reality!
Through thy Reality--lo! the immortal Idea!


Brain of the New World! what a task is thine! 20
To formulate the Modern.....Out of the peerless grandeur of the


modern,
Out of Thyself--comprising Science--to recast Poems, Churches, Art,
(Recast--may-be discard them, end them--May-be their work is done-


who knows?)
By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past,
the dead,
To limn, with absolute faith, the mighty living present.

(And yet, thou living, present brain! heir of the dead, the Old World

brain!
Thou that lay folded, like an unborn babe, within its folds so long!
Thou carefully prepared by it so long!--haply thou but unfoldest it-


only maturest it;
It to eventuate in thee--the essence of the by-gone time contain'd in
thee;
Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with
reference to thee, 30
The fruit of all the Old, ripening to-day in thee.)

Sail--sail thy best, ship of Democracy!


Of value is thy freight--'tis not the Present only,

The Past is also stored in thee!

Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone--not of thy western
continent alone;

Earth's résumé entire floats on thy keel, O ship--is steadied by thy
spars;

With thee Time voyages in trust--the antecedent nations sink or swim
with thee;

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou
bear'st the other continents;

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant:

--Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O helmsman--thou
carryest great companions, 40

Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee,

And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee.

Beautiful World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes,

Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky;

Emblem of general Maternity, lifted above all;

Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons;

Out of thy teeming womb, thy giant babes in ceaseless procession
issuing,

Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength
and life;

World of the Real! world of the twain in one!

World of the Soul--born by the world of the real alone--led to
identity, body, by it alone; 50

Yet in beginning only--incalculable masses of composite, precious
materials,

By history's cycles forwarded--by every nation, language, hither
sent,

Ready, collected here--a freer, vast, electric World, to be
constructed here,

(The true New World--the world of orbic Science, Morals, Literatures
to come,)

Thou Wonder World, yet undefined, unform'd--neither do I define thee;

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness, evil as well as good;

I watch thee, advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the
past;

I see thy light lighting and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire
globe;

But I do not undertake to define thee--hardly to comprehend thee; 60

I but thee name--thee prophecy--as now!

I merely thee ejaculate!

Thee in thy future;

Thee in thy only permanent life, career--thy own unloosen'd mind--thy
soaring spirit;

Thee as another equally needed sun, America--radiant, ablaze, swiftmoving,
fructifying all;


Thee! risen in thy potent cheerfulness and joy--thy endless, great
hilarity!

(Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long--that weigh'd so
long upon the mind of man,

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man;)

Thee in thy larger, saner breeds of Female, Male--thee in thy
athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East,

(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son,
endear'd alike, forever equal;) 70

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain;

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization (until which thy proudest
material wealth and civilization must remain in vain;)

Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing Worship--thee in no single
bible, saviour, merely,

Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself--thy bibles incessant,
within thyself, equal to any, divine as any;

Thee in an education grown of thee--in teachers, studies, students,
born of thee;

Thee in thy democratic fetes, en masse--thy high original festivals,
operas, lecturers, preachers;

Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed--the
edifice on sure foundations tied,)

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought--thy topmost rational
joys--thy love, and godlike aspiration,

In thy resplendent coming literati--thy full-lung'd orators--thy
sacerdotal bards--kosmic savans,

These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophecy. 80

Land tolerating all--accepting all--not for the good alone--all good
for thee;

Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself;

Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

(Lo! where arise three peerless stars,
To be thy natal stars, my country--Ensemble--Evolution--Freedom,
Set in the sky of Law.)


Land of unprecedented faith--God's faith!

Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd;

The general inner earth, so long, so sedulously draped over, now and
hence for what it is, boldly laid bare,

Open'd by thee to heaven's light, for benefit or bale. 90

Not for success alone;

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always;

The storm shall dash thy face--the murk of war, and worse than war,
shall cover thee all over;

(Wert capable of war--its tug and trials? Be capable of peace, its
trials;

For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in peace--not
war;)


In many a smiling mask death shall approach, beguiling thee--thou in
disease shalt swelter;
The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts,
seeking to strike thee deep within;
Consumption of the worst--moral consumption--shall rouge thy face
with hectic:
But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them

all,
Whatever they are to-day, and whatever through time they may be, 100
They each and all shall lift, and pass away, and cease from thee;
While thou, Time's spirals rounding--out of thyself, thyself still

extricating, fusing,
Equable, natural, mystical Union thou--(the mortal with immortal
blent,)
Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future--the spirit of the
body and the mind,
The Soul--its destinies.


The Soul, its destinies--the real real,
(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)
In thee, America, the Soul, its destinies;
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd--(by these thyself


solidifying;) 110
Thou mental, moral orb! thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!
The Present holds thee not--for such vast growth as thine--for such


unparallel'd flight as thine,
The Future only holds thee, and can hold thee.

A Paumanok Picture

TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-they
drop the join'd seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the

beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-deep

in the water, pois'd on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,

the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers.

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.
As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,
Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,
Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky
And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear
In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

Song 'Coast Starlight'

Some days I feel a sadness not of grief
The shadows lengthen on the earth's relief
Salinas flows by like a silver shawl
A girl waves from the mission wall.

The Ocean's Song
We walked amongst the ruins famed in story
Of Rozel-Tower,
And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory
And heave in power.
O Ocean vast! We heard thy song with wonder,
Whilst waves marked time.
"Appear, O Truth!" thou sang'st with tone of thunder,
"And shine sublime!
"The world's enslaved and hunted down by beagles,
To despots sold.
Souls of deep thinkers, soar like mighty eagles!
The Right uphold.
"Be born! arise! o'er the earth and wild waves bounding,
Peoples and suns!
Let darkness vanish; tocsins be resounding,
And flash, ye guns!
"And you who love no pomps of fog or glamour,
Who fear no shocks,
Brave foam and lightning, hurricane and clamour,--
Exiles: the rocks!"