A Sea Symphony

I. Tempest
Ocean, eternal mother of the free !
Thine uproar is the sound of Liberty.
Shout forth a clarion-call tempestuously !
" England, though comfortable sleep be sweet.
Whispering emperors ominously meet :
What if they murder Freedom, murder man ?
Shall not thy rent red flag inflame the van
Of battle as erst? Arouse thee unto war!
Hearken how thunderpeals from Trafalgar,
Nile, and the Baltic, thine heroic past.
Fill loud my clarions of surge and blast !
Awake ! for fear thy lethargy may prove the last ! "

Grand lion-leap of billows ! how they fall,
Plunging with hunger to devour the shore !
Hurled mountain of blown billow 'thwart the wall
Of cliff precipitous bursting with stupendous roar !
Cavernous halls of hoary mountains under
Shake with a shock of subterranean thunder,
Rumble with roll of long reverberate thunder !
Crushed all the turbid water-mountain toils,
Whose slain, immense, pale, shadowy ghost is thrown
High among hurrying storm-cloud, and recoils
Seethingly, limply plashing on the stone.
While underneath a baffled field of foam,
Poured out disorderly, retreats to rise
One fulvous mass of spume upon a dome
Of wave colossal threatening the skies :
Lo ! as it sweeps imperial, the curl
In toppling hangs arrested by a swirl
Refluent baflled ; rears aloft to hurl
All, one grim rampart perpendicular.
Bodily heavenward, whose wrestling froth,
In terrible welter of tumultuous wrath.
Flickers to momentary crags of spar ;
Headlong to ruin charges with an ocean jar,
A headlong ruin of water, heard inland afar !

Terrific hurricane of howling wind and sea !
Cower from the whirlwind, lest in scorn it scatter thee !
Or fling thee in the ravening cauldron there —
Cling to the rock — let tawny salt seafoam flakes tear
Hissingly o'er thee from a turbulent despair !
Shout forth thy drowned and feeble human shout of joy,
In fellow-feeling with the elements, a toy
Ofthe blind Titans, yet a toy that knows. . . .
. . . But what is this at hand that reels, and drifts, and bows?
Not helpless chaos of a huge oarweed,
Torn up and strewn far, senseless rage to feed —
A ship ! a ship ! a horrible vision here !
One snapt mast with its tangling cordage-gear
Overboard flounders ; on the flooded deck
Three scared men desperate clinging strain the neck
To look for any help toward the rocky roar ;
Whom Death alone confronts upon the awful shore !
A small black dog i' the hatchway yelping piteously —
I see it still — a crash — anon victoriously
Climb maniac cataracts upon rent planks and corses clamorously !

II. Calm

After two days I lay reclined in peace
Near the sea margin ; delicate soft fleece
Of cloud lay poised above me, and the sea
.Slumbered about her shores, how tranquilly !
Cicnlle as a child, she opened her blue eyes
In murmurous foamsmile of a faint surprise.
Touching the strand : yon vaporous headlands are
Suffused with mellow sunlight, while afar
A nebulous isle half fades into the sky,
Like some dear hoped-for possibility.
Hushful sea-murmur lulls all pain to sleep,
Breathing enchantment from the Holy Deep —
One feels so happy here, one fain would weep !
Among fair silver labyrinths a stain
Of solemn purple on the lonely main
Long from one cloud lies; in still mother o'
pearl
Yonder no white sail will a vessel furl
To-day, among the "innumerable smile"
Of one who hides no wrath, nor harbours guile ;
Zephyr with his soft seaplume fans the while.
Quietly wander by the quiet shore.
To find enrapturing wonders more and more !
Here, ankle-deep in valved shelly shingle.
Merry young children, with white limbs atingle.
Leap laughing, while a playful ripple blue
Merrily laves them ; ah ! how fair the hue
Of azure sea set by a dovelike tone
Of boulders, where I wander all alone!
Now and then their prevailing hue will bring
Aerial colour, soft as seamew wing,
On water, modulating mirrored sky
To filmy pureness of chalcedony.
In still sea- waters of a cove will grow
Slim growths of plashing crystal, when there flow,
Oceanward tinkling, rillets from above,
Born among hazels, while with ocean love
Glisten low-lying rocks in many a cove.
Weird block of waveworn labyrinthine grey,
Hollowed out, with small opening for day
Somewhere concealed as one explores, a fairy
Or mermaiden may haunt thee, little wary
Of man's intrusion on her lonely spot,
Or sleepy seal may use thee, twilit grot !
But many a wondrous cavern richly hued
Quavers in delicate waterlight, imbued
Their dim recesses with a dusk maroon,
Mossgreen or lilac, all a quiet tune
Of heaving water hearing, while sea-flowers
Crimson or wavegreen bud in all the bowers.
This lofty cave's a gorgeous palace-gate,
Where some Sea-Genius holds royal state:
Surely the stillness may invite to float
Pensively hither in a slender boat,
And pore upon the faint seagroves remote !
Where now thy terrible moods, O sea? . .
. . . But this ?
In yon dark fissure where an ocean-kiss
Tenderly falls in music, a dim mass
Sways with a nigh impalpably-heaved glass:
Creep near ... it wears a horrible human shape !
An eyeless head is nodding from the nape.
Poor ghastly mockery of a human form,
Jammed here in fierce delirium of storm !
And look ! a shadowy monster in the deep
Looms huge and hungry near the awful sleep !
Yonder a board swims rusty-nailed and rent,
Four painted letters with the tangle blent.
There is a mellow, dark-eyed maid in Spain,
Who waits a token from a foreign main.

III. Twilight

A little wandering child has lost his way
On a hushed mountain at the close of day,
On a brine-bitten waste that slopes to grey
Abrupt cliffs, where a melancholy sea
Expands a far, slow-wrinkling mercury:
One cold, dim gleam, with three dark shadows vast.
From clouds immense in faded blues amassed,
Shadows that in a drear}' twilight brood
Portentous phantom Presences, imbued,
Silently awful, with a life not ours ;
While on the seashore formidably lowers
A corrugated monster bulk of stone ;
Some huge, unwieldy monster left alone.
Slumbrous aware, with face toward old Ocean,
Since some pre-human age when such as he had motion.

Rude, samphired, pinnacled, great crags arise
Sheer from dull seas into low, dusky skies ;
And one, a ghostly giant, leans athwart
Twilight, to watch him wandering, huge and swart !
Through one wild arch in yonder cape waveworn
Expands a dreary infinite forlorn.
Infinite, pale, and dim and desolate.
Monotonous Ocean, with the Voice of Fate
Breathes homeless, helpless, and disconsolate.
Some sere, sparse mountain-bents moan shivering.
As the gust wearies them, and withered ling.
Near a path, pale with night that deepens round,
A ruinous gate stirs with an eerie sound.
Ah ! were it she who came to seek the child
His mother ! with a piteous gesture wild
He turns and calls : alas ! she will not come ;
Dead mother knows not he is lost from home !
Dusk flaps a heavy-flighted cormorant,
Whereat the timorous breast begins to pant :
What dwarfed old man distorted threatens him?
'Tis but a dry tree with blast-wrilhen limb !
Now, chill at heart, the little wanderer weeps.
And stumbles pale among the rugged steeps.

But God hath pity on a babe's despair :
For now he gains a summit ; unaware
There breaks upon his poor, tear-misted sight
A blissful vision of supreme delight I
Cheery near lights of houses in the town ;
And cheery murmuring human tones are blown
Upon the wind towards him ! then the child
Thanked God who led him hither from the wild ;
Brushed with his hand the tears, and ran so fast;
Clasped in his father's happy arms at last !

IV. Breeze

Climb upon yonder ivied neck of rock,
Flanked with twin chasms, and hear unrestful shock
Of tidal water in the caves rebuffed.
With fierce, impatient contumely cuffed,
Along the front of stern embattled coast.
Spat forth in spray firom sombre innermost
Hollows ; and ever heaving blindly under,
Blundering in with subterranean thunder !
Stumbling and fximbling, water in the caves,
I.ikeastrange, sullen beast, assaults and braves
The rocky scorn for ever; chafed to froth,
Bellowing snorts in impotent dull wrath ;
So famished beast prowls ever, thrusting snout
Under his bars, in pain till he break out.
Yea, this immortal, subtle, importunate Sea,
Conquers our stolid Earth implacably.
Though round our ruined shores He laugh and dally.
Chafing for war his proud battalions rally.
See how the simmering wash of swelling wave
Feels all alive along rich ooze of cave !
Yon grand expansive green hath belts to-day
Of blue and tawny, flecked with sparkling spray
By the brisk breeze that blows with cheerful play,
Wafting a merry crest in snowy smoke.
Glassed in the billow while it tossed and broke !
And there is evermore a restless wreath
Around the innumerable sharp shark's teeth,
Black flames rough crusted, threatening fangs of death.

Yonder, lo ! the tide is flowing;
Clamber, while the breeze is blowing,
Down to where a soft foam flusters
Dulse and fairy feathery clusters !
While it fills the shelly hollows,
A swift sister billow follows,
Leaps in hurrying with the tide,
Seems the lingering wave to chide ;
Both push on with eager life.
And a gurgling show of strife.
O the salt, refreshing air
Shrilly blowing in the hair !
A keen, healthful savour haunts
Sea-shell, sea-flower, and sea-plants.
Innocent billows on the strand
Leave a crystal over sand,
Whose thin ebbing soon is crossed
Of a crystal foam-enmossed,
Variegating silvergrey
Shell-empetalled sand in play:
When from sand dries off the brine.
Vanishes swift shadow fine;
But a wet sand is a glass
Where the plumy cloudlets pass.
Floating islands of the blue.
Tender, shining, fair, and true.

Who would linger idle,
Dallying would lie,
When wind and wave, a bridal
Celebrating, fly?
Let him plunge among them,
Who hath wooed enough,
Flirted with them, sung them !
In the salt seatrough
He may win them, onward
On a buoyant crest,
Far to seaward, sunward.
Oceanborne to rest !
Wild wind will sing over him,
And the free foam cover him.
Swimming seaward, sunward,
On a blithe sea-breast !
On a blithe sea-bosom
Swims another too.
Swims a live sea-blossom,
A grey-winged seamew !
Grapegreen all the waves are.
By whose hurrying line
Half of ships and caves are
Buried under brine ;
Supple, shifting ranges
Lucent at the crest.
With pearly surface-changes
Never laid to rest:
Now a dripping gunwale
Momently he sees,
Now a fuming funnel.
Or red flag in the breeze.
Arms flung open wide.
Lip the laughing sea ;
For playfellow, for bride.
Claim her impetuously !
Triumphantly exult with all the free
Buoyant bounding splendour of the sea I
And if, while on the billow
Wearily he lay,
His awful wild playfellow
Filled hi mouth with spray.
Reft him of his breath,
To some far realms away
He would float with Death ;
Wild wind would sing over him,
And the free foam cover him,
Waft him sleeping onward,
Floating seaward, sunward,
All alone with Death ;
In a realm of wondrous dreams,
And shadow-haunted ocean-gleams !

North Devon.