With arrowy glimpses traversing the shade.
Night's train, as they had kindled one by one,
Now one by one withdrew, reversing order,
Where those that came the latest, earliest went:
Day rose triumphant, and again to me
Sky, sun, and sea were all the universe;
But ah! the glory had departed, and I longed
For some untried vicissitude :-it came.
A breeze sprang up, and with careering wing
Played like an unseen being on the water.
Slowly from slumber 'woke the unwilling main,
Curling and murmuring, till the infant waves
Leaped on his lap, and laughed in air and sunshine.
Then all was bright and beautiful emotion,
And sweet accordance of susurrant sounds.
I felt the gay delirium of the scene;
I felt the breeze and billow chase each other,
Like bounding pulses in my human veins;
For, though impassive to the elements,
The form I wore was exquisitely tuned
To Nature's sympathies; joy, fear, hope, sorrow,
(As though I yet were in the body,) moved,
Elated, shook, or tranquillized my soul.
Thus passed the day: night followed, decked with stars Innumerable, and the pale new moon,
Beneath her feet, a slight inverted crescent,
Time flew on, and brought
Alternate morn and eve. The sun, the stars,
The moon through all her phases, waxing, waning,
The planets seeking rest, and finding none,
-These were the only objects in mine eye,
The constant burden of my thoughts, perplexed
With vain conjectures why they were created.
Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm,
Looking around for comfort, I descried,
Far on the green horizon's utmost verge,
A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery,
For each new image sprang a new idea,
The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.
The little vapour rapidly expanded,
Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun,
And threw a starless night upon the sea.
Eagerly, tremblingly, I watched the end.
Faint gleamed the lightning, followed by no peal;
Dreary and hollow moans foretold a gale ;
Nor long the issue tarried: then the wind,
Unprisoned, blew its trumpet loud and shrill;
Out flashed the lightnings gloriously; the rain
Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder
Rolled in grand harmony throughout high heaven;
Till ocean, breaking from his black supineness,
Drowned in his own stupendous uproar all
The voices of the storm beside: meanwhile
A war of mountains raged upon his surface;
Mountains each other swallowing, and again
New Alps and Andes, from unfathomed valleys
Upstarting, joined the battle; like those sons
Of earth, Giants, rebounding as new-born
From every fall on their unwearied mother.
I glowed with all the rapture of the strife;
Beneath, was one wild whirl of foaming surges;
Above, the array of lightnings, like the swords
Of Cherubim, wide-brandished to repel
Aggression from heaven's gates; their flaming strokes
Quenched momentarily in the vast abyss.
The voice of Him who walks upon the wind, And sets His throne upon the floods, rebuked The headlong tempest in its mid-career,
And turned its horrors to magnificence.
The evening sun broke through the embattled clouds,
And threw round sky and sea, as by enchantment,
A radiant girdle, binding them to peace,
In the full rainbow's harmony of beams;
No brilliant fragment, but one sevenfold circle,
That spanned the horizon, meted out the heavens,
And underarched the ocean. 'T was a scene
That left itself for ever on my mind.
Night, silent, cool, transparent, crowned the day; The sky receded further into space,
The stars came lower down to meet the eye,
Till the whole hemisphere, alive with light,
Twinkled from east to west by one consent.
The constellations round the arctic pole,
That never set to us, here scarcely rose,
But, in their stead, Orion through the north
Pursued the Pleiads; Sirius, with his keen
Quick scintillations, in the zenith reigned.
The south unveiled its glories ;-there the Wolf,
With eyes of lightning, watched the Centaur's spear;
Through the clear hyaline the Ship of Heaven
Came sailing from eternity; the Dove,
On silver pinions, winged her peaceful way:
There, at the footstool of JEHOVAH'S throne,
The Altar, kindled from His presence, blazed;
There, too, all else excelling, meekly shone
The Cross, the symbol of redeeming love:
The Heavens declared the glory of the LORD,
The firmament displayed His handiwork.
With scarce inferior lustre gleamed the sea,
Whose waves were spangled with phosphoric fire,
As though the lightnings there had spent their shafts,
And left the fragments glittering on the field.
Next morn, in mockery of a storm, the breeze
And waters skirmished; bubble-armies fought
Millions of battles on the crested surges,
And where they fell, all covered with their glory,
Traced, in white foam on the cerulean main,
Paths, like the milky-way among the stars.
Charmed with the spectacle, yet deeply touched
With a forlorn and not untender feeling-
"Why," said my thoughts within me, "why this waste Of loveliness and grandeur unenjoyed?
Is there no life throughout this fair existence?
Sky, sun, and sea; the moon, the stars, the clouds,
Wind, lightning, thunder,-are but ministers ;
They know not what they are, nor what they do:
Oh for the beings for whom these were made!"
Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
- To me appeared this lonely nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself alive.
Entranced in contemplation vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.
It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing: While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,-
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long light wings, that flung a diamond shower
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure, on the surge,
A shoal of dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,
Glowed with such orient tints, they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstacy o'er these I hung,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colours came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes,-
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan
Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
These were but preludes to the revelry
That reigned at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,
As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners: aloof,
On winglike fins, in bow-and-arrow figures,
The flying-fishes darted to and fro;
While spouting whales projected wat'ry columns,
That turned to arches at their height, and seemed The skeletons of crystal palaces
Built on the blue expanse, then perishing,
Frail as the element which they were made of;
Dolphins, in gambols, lent the lucid brine
Hues richer than the canopy of eve,
That overhung the scene with gorgeous clouds,
Decaying into gloom more beautiful
Than the sun's golden liveries which they lost;
Till light that hides, and darkness that reveals,
The stars, exchanging guard, like sentinels
Of day and night,-transformed the face of Nature:
Above was wakefulness, silence around,
Beneath repose,-repose that reached even me.
Power, will, sensation, memory, failed in turn;
My very essence seemed to pass away,
Like a thin cloud that melts across the moon,
Lost in the blue immensity of heaven.
LIFE'S intermitting pulse again went on:
I woke amidst the beauty of a morn
That shone as bright within me as around.
The presence-chamber of the soul was full
Of flitting images and rapturous thoughts;
For eye and mind were opened to explore
The secrets of the abyss erewhile concealed.
The floor of ocean, never trod by man,
Was visible to me as heaven's round roof,
Which man hath never touched; the multitude
Of living things in that new hemisphere
Gleamed out of darkness, like the stars at midnight,
When moon nor clouds, with light or shade, obscure them. For, as in hollows of the tide-worn reef,
Left at low water glistening in the sun,
Pellucid pools and rocks in miniature,
With their small fry of fishes, crusted shells,
Rich mosses, treelike sea-weed, sparkling pebbles,
Enchant the eye, and tempt the eager hand
To violate the fairy Paradise,
So to my view the deep disclosed its wonders.
In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered, and dived, in play, in chase, in battle,
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind,
(Strange forms, resplendent colours, kinds unnumbered,)
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Hath never seen; from dread Leviathan,
To insect millions peopling every wave;
And nameless tribes, half-plant, half-animal,
Rooted and slumbering through a dream of life.
The livelier inmates to the surface sprang,
To taste the freshness of heaven's breath, and feel
That light is pleasant, and the sunbeam warm.
Most in the middle region sought their prey,
Safety, or pastime; solitary some,
And some in pairs affectionately joined ;
Others in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instinct through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
-Whales, sharks, and monsters, armed in front or jaw
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.
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