To go plumb plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,

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And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails!

Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea unicorn,

And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn;

To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn;

And for the ghastly-grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn;

To leap down on the kraken's back, where 'mid Norwegian isles

He lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallowed miles,

Till snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he

rolls;

Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far-astonished shoals

Of his black-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in

a cove,

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Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love,

To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,

To wrestle with the Sea-serpent upon cerulean sands.

O broad-armed Fisher of the Deep, whose sports can equal thine?

The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons that tugs thy cable line;

And night by night 't is thy delight, thy glory

day by day,

Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play;

But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave,

A fisher's joy is to destroy, thine office is to save.

O lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand

Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who

that dripping band,

Slow swaying in the heaving waves that round about thee bend,

With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing their ancient friend:

O, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee,

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Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou 'dst leap within the sea!

Give honour to their memories who left the pleasant strand,

To shed their blood so freely for the love of

Fatherland,

Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave,

So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing

wave;

Oh, though our Anchor may not be all I have

fondly sung,

Honour him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!

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1832.

Samuel Ferguson.

SEAWEED

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,

Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

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Currents of the restless main;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, erelong

From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;

From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor

That forever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;

From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,

Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,

They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

1844.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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48

THE CLOUD

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 't is my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits:

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder;

It struggles and howls by fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

ΙΟ

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