Sea Pictures

Sea-birds are asleep,
The world forgets to weep,
Sea murmurs her soft slumber-song
On the shadowy sand
Of this elfin land;
"I, the Mother mild, 
Hush thee, O my child,
Forget the voices wild!
Isles in elfin light
Dream, the rocks and caves,
Lull'd by whispering waves,
Veil their marbles bright.
Foam glimmers faintly white
Upon the shelly sand
Of this elfin land;
Sea-sound, like violins,
To slumber woos and wins,
I murmur my soft slumber-song,
Leave woes, and wails, and sins,
Ocean's shadowy might
Breathes good night,
  Good night!"

Closely let me hold thy hand,
   Storms are sweeping sea and land;
Love alone will stand.

Closely cling, for waves beat fast,
   Foam-flakes cloud the hurrying blast;
Love alone will last.

Kiss my lips, and softly say:
   Joy, sea-swept, may fade to-day;
Love alone will stay.

The ship went on with solemn face;
   To meet the darkness on the deep,
      The solemn ship went onward.
I bowed down weary in the place;
   For parting tears and present sleep
      Had weighed mine eyelids downward.

The new sight, the new wondrous sight!
   The waters around me, turbulent,
      The skies, impassive o'er me,
Calm in a moonless, sunless light,
   As glorified by even the intent
      Of holding the day glory!

Love me, sweet friends, this Sabbath day.
   The sea sings round me while ye roll
      Afar the hymn, unaltered,
And kneel, where once I knelt to pray,
   And bless me deeper in your soul
      Because your voice has faltered.

And though this sabbath comes to me
   Without the stolèd minister,
      And chanting congregation,
God's Spirit shall give comfort. He
   Who brooded soft on waters drear,
      Creator on creation.

He shall assist me to look higher,
He shall assist me to look higher,
   Where keep the saints, with harp and song,
      An endless  ...  sabbath morning,
      An endless sabbath morning,
And, on that sea commixed with fire,
And that sea commixed with fire,
   Oft drop their eyelids raised too long
      To the full Godhead's burning.
      The full Godhead's burning.

The deeps have music soft and low
  When winds awake the airy spry,
It lures me, lures me on to go
  And see the land where corals lie.

By mount and mead, by lawn and rill,
  When night is deep, and moon is high,
That music seeks and finds me still,
  And tells me where the corals lie.

Yes, press my eyelids close, 'tis well,
  But far the rapid fancies fly
The rolling worlds of wave and shell,
  And all the lands where corals lie.

Thy lips are like a sunset glow,
  Thy smile is like a morning sky,
Yet leave me, leave me, let me go
  And see the land where corals lie.

With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
  To southward far as the sight can roam ;
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
  The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor'ward,
The rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
Waifs wreck'd seaward and wasted shoreward,
  On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim, gray coast and a seaboard ghastly,
  And shores trod seldom by feet of men --
Where the batter'd hull and the broken mast lie,
  They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
  God surely loved us a little then.

The skies were fairer, the shores were firmer --
  The blue sea over the bright sand roll'd;
Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur,
  Sheen of silver and glamour of gold.
 ... 

 ... 

So girt with tempest and wing'd with thunder,  
And clad with lightning and shod with sleet,
  And strong winds treading the swift waves under
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
  One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on
The sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson,
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun,
  That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet.

O, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
  The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
  In your hollow backs, on your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never man has ridden
In your sleepy, swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow'd thro' strifes forbidden,
   Where no light wearies and no love wanes.