Nor on the stage Of rural landscape are their lights and shades Of more harmonious dance and play than thine. How vividly this moment brightens forth, Between grey parallel and leaden breadths, A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league, Flush'd like the rainbow or the ringdove's neck, And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing The semblance of a meteor.
Mighty Sea! Cameleon-like thou changest, but there's love In all thy change, and constant sympathy With yonder Sky--thy mistress; from her brow Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colours on Thy faithful bosom; morning's milky white, Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve; And all thy balmier hours' fair Element, Have such divine complexion--crisped smiles, Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings, That little is the wonder Love's own Queen From thee of old was fabled to have sprung--
Creation's common! which no human power Can parcel or inclose; the lordliest floods And cataracts that the tiny hands of man Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew To thee that could'st subdue the Earth itself, And brook'st commandment from the Heavens alone For marshalling thy waves--
Yet, potent Sea! How placidly thy moist lips speak e'en now Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be So fanciless as to feel no gratitude That power and grandeur can be so serene, Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way. And rocking e'en the fisher's little bark As gently as a mother rocks her child?--
The inhabitants of other worlds behold Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share On earth's rotundity; and is he not A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man Who sees not, or who seeing has no joy, In thy magnificence? What though thou art Unconscious and material, thou canst reach The inmost immaterial mind's recess, And with thy tints and motion stir its chords To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre!
The Spirit of the Universe in thee Is visible; thou hast in thee the life-- The eternal, graceful, and majestic life-- Of nature, and the natural human heart Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.
Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-circling sea Has spires and mansions more amusive still-- Men's volant homes that measure liquid space On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land, With pain'd and panting steeds, and clouds of dust, Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the night, Moor'd as they cast the shadows of their masts In long array, or hither flit and yond Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights, Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.