Sea, Rivers and Oceans

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round.

Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoarfrost spread; But where the ship’s huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red.

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.

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent 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!

And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

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.

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world.

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. 57

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d— The wild waves whist,— Foot it featly here and there.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.

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.

The enchafed flood.

Your mind is tossing on the ocean.

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.