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| THE SEA is mighty, but a mightier sways | |
| His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have scooped | |
| His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy breath, | |
| That moved in the beginning o’er his face, | |
| Moves o’er it evermore. The obedient waves | 5 |
| To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall. | |
| Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up, | |
| As at the first, to water the great earth, | |
| And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms | |
| Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind, | 10 |
| And in the dropping shower with gladness hear | |
| Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth | |
| Over the boundless blue, where joyously | |
| The bright crests of innumerable waves | |
| Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands | 15 |
| Of a great multitude are upward flung | |
| In acclamation. I behold the ships | |
| Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle, | |
| Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening home | |
| From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze | 20 |
| That bears them, with the riches of the land, | |
| And treasure of dear lives, till, in the port, | |
| The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail. | |
| |
| But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face | |
| The blast that wakes the fury of the sea? | 25 |
| O God! thy justice makes the world turn pale, | |
| When on the armed fleet, that royally | |
| Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite | |
| Some city, or invade some thoughtless realm, | |
| Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks | 30 |
| Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the sails | |
| Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts | |
| Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks, | |
| Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, | |
| Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed | 35 |
| In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed | |
| By whirlpools, or dashed dead upon the rocks. | |
| Then stand the nations still with awe, and pause | |
| A moment from the bloody work of war. | |
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| These restless surges eat away the shores | 40 |
| Of earth’s old continents; the fertile plain | |
| Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down, | |
| And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets | |
| Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar | |
| In the green chambers of the middle sea, | 45 |
| Where broadest spread the waters, and the line | |
| Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, | |
| Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm | |
| To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age | |
| He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, | 50 |
| His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check | |
| The long wave rolling from the southern pole | |
| To break upon Japan. Thou bidd’st the fires, | |
| That smoulder under ocean, heave on high | |
| The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, | 55 |
| A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. | |
| The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts | |
| With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs | |
| Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers, | |
| Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look | 60 |
| On thy creation, and pronounce it good. | |
| Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, | |
| Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods, | |
| Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join | |
| The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn. | 65 |
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