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(From Marcian Colonna)
O THOU vast ocean! ever-sounding sea! | |
| Thou symbol of a drear immensity! | |
| Thou thing that windest round the solid world | |
| Like a huge animal, which, downward hurled | |
| From the black clouds, lies weltering and alone, | 5 |
| Lashing and writhing till its strength be gone! | |
| Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy sleep | |
| Is as a giant’s slumber, loud and deep. | |
| Thou speakest in the east and in the west | |
| At once, and on thy heavy-laden breast | 10 |
| Fleets come and go, and things that have no life | |
| Or motion, yet are moved and met in strife. | |
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| The earth hath naught of this: no chance nor change | |
| Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare | |
| Give answer to the tempest-wakened air; | 15 |
| But o’er its wastes the weakly tenants range | |
| At will, and wound its bosom as they go: | |
| Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow; | |
| But in their stated rounds the seasons come, | |
| And pass like visions to their viewless home, | 20 |
| And come again, and vanish: the young Spring | |
| Looks ever bright with leaves and blossoming; | |
| And Winter always winds his sullen horn, | |
| When the wild Autumn, with a look forlorn | |
| Dies in his strong manhood; and the skies | 25 |
| Weep, and flowers sicken, when the Summer flies. | |
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| Thou only, terrible ocean, hast a power, | |
| A will, a voice, and in thy wrathful hour, | |
| When thou dost lift thine anger to the clouds, | |
| A fearful and magnificent beauty shrouds | 30 |
| Thy broad green forehead. If thy waves be driven | |
| Backward and forward by the shifting wind, | |
| How quickly dost thou thy great strength unbind, | |
| And stretch thine arms, and war at once with Heaven! | |
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| Thou trackless and immeasurable main! | 35 |
| On thee no record ever lived again | |
| To meet the hand that writ it; line nor lead | |
| Hath ever fathomed thy profoundest deeps, | |
| Where haply the huge monster swells and sleeps, | |
| King of his watery limit, who, ’t is said, | 40 |
| Can move the mighty ocean into storm,— | |
| O, wonderful thou art, great element, | |
| And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent, | |
| And lovely in repose; thy summer form | |
| Is beautiful, and when thy silver waves | 45 |
| Make music in earth’s dark and winding caves, | |
| I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, | |
| Marking the sunlight at the evening hour, | |
| And hearken to the thoughts thy waters teach,— | |
| “Eternity, Eternity, and Power.” | 50 |
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