Lines on the View from St. Leonard’s

Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!’Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not,Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smileMy heart beats calmer, and my very mindInhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomerThy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy dinTo me is peace, thy restlessness repose.E’en gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanesWith all the darling field-flowers in their prime,And gardens haunted by the nightingales’Long trills and gushing ecstacies of songFor these wild headlands and the sea-mew’s clang—

With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea,I long not to o’erlook earth’s fairest gladesAnd green savannahs—Earth has not a plainSo boundless or so beautiful as thine;The eagle’s vision cannot take it in:The lightning’s wing too weak to sweep its spaceSinks half-way o’er it like a wearied bird:It is the mirror of the stars, where allTheir hosts within the concave firmament,Gay marching to the music of the spheres,Can see themselves at once.

Nor on the stageOf rural landscape are there lights and shadesOf more harmonious dance and play than thine.How vividly this moment brightens forth,Between grey parallel and leaden breadths.A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove’s neck,And giving to the glancing sea-bird’s wingThe semblance of a meteor.

Mighty sea!Cameleon-like thou changest, but there’s loveIn all thy change, and constant sympathyWith yonder Sky—thy Mistress; from her browThou tak’st thy moods and wear’st her colours onThy faithful bosom; morning’s milky white,Noon’s sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,Have such divine complexion—crispèd smiles,Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,That little is the wonder Love’s own QueenFrom thee of old was fabled to have sprung—

Creation’s common! which no human powerCan parcel or enclose; the lordliest floodsAnd cataracts that the tiny hands of manCan tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dewTo thee that couldst subdue the Earth itself,And brook’st commandment from the Heavens aloneFor marshalling thy waves—

Yet, potent sea!How placidly thy moist lips speak e’en nowAlong yon sparkling shingles. Who can beSo fanciless as to feel no gratitudeThat power and grandeur can be so serene,Soothing the home-bound navy’s peaceful way,And rocking e’en the fisher’s little barkAs gently as a mother rocks her child?—

The inhabitants of other worlds beholdOur orb more lucid for thy spacious shareOn earth’s rotundity; and is he notA blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the manWho sees not or who seeing has no joyIn thy magnificence? What though thou artUnconscious and material, thou canst reachThe inmost immaterial mind’s recess,And with thy tints and motion stir its chordsTo music, like the light on Memnon’s lyre!

The Spirit of the Universe in theeIs visible; thou hast in thee the life—The eternal, graceful, and majestic life—Of nature and the natural human heartIs therefore bound to thee with holy love.

Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling seaHas spires and mansions more amusive still—Men’s volant homes that measure liquid spaceOn wheel or wing. The chariot of the landWith pained and panting steeds and clouds of dustHas no sight-gladdening motion like these fairCareerers with the foam beneath their bows,Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by dayWhose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night,Moored as they cast the shadows of their mastsIn long array, or hither flit and yondMysteriously with slow and crossing lights,Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.

There is a magnet-like attraction inThese waters to the imaginative powerThat links the viewless with the visible,And pictures things unseen. To realms beyondYon highway of the world my fancy flies,When by her tall and triple mast we knowSome noble voyager that has to wooThe trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge.The coral groves—the shores of conch and pearl,Where she will cast her anchor and reflectHer cabin-window lights on warmer waves,And under planets brighter than our own:The nights of palmy isles, that she will seeLit boundless by the fire-fly—all the smellsOf tropic fruits that will regale her—allThe pomp of nature, and the inspiritingVarieties of life she has to greet,Come swarming o’er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean hasHis darker hints; but where’s the elementThat chequers not its usefulness to man.With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimesHer children with Tartarean fires, or shakesTheir shrieking cities, and, with one last clangOf bells for their own ruin, strews them flatAs riddled ashes—silent as the grave?Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?I should—old Ocean’s Saturnalian daysAnd roaring nights of revelry and sportWith wreck and human woe—be loth to sing;For they are few and all their ills weigh lightAgainst his sacred usefulness, that bidsOur pensile globe revolve in purer air.Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receiveTheir fresh’ning dews, gay fluttering breezes coolTheir wings to fan the brow of fevered climes,And here the Spring dips down her emerald urnFor showers to glad the earth.

Old Ocean wasInfinity of ages ere we breathedExistence—and he will be beautifulWhen all the living world that sees him nowShall roll unconscious dust around the sun.Quelling from age to age the vital throbIn human hearts, Death shall not subjugateThe pulse that swells in his stupendous breast,Or interdict his minstrelsy to soundIn thund’ring concert with the quiring winds;But long as Man to parent Nature ownsInstinctive homage, and in times beyondThe power of thought to reach, bard after bardShall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA!