That power and grandeur can be so serene,
Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way,
And rocking ev❜n 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

Å 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 pained 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,
Moored 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.

There is a magnet-like attraction in
These waters to the imaginative power
That links the viewless with the visible,
And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond
Yon highway of the world my fancy flies,
When by her tall and triple mast we know
Some noble voyager that has to woo

The trade-winds and to stem the ecliptic surge.
The coral groves-the shores of conch and pearl,
Where she will cast her anchor and reflect
Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves,
And under planets brighter than our own :
The nights of palmy isles, that she will see
Lit boundless by the fire-fly-all the smells
Of tropic fruits that will regale her—all
The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting
Varieties of life she has to greet,
Come swarming o'er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has
His darker tints; but where's the element
That chequers not its usefulness to man

With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes
Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes

Their shrieking cities, and; with one last clang

Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat

As riddled ashes-silent as the grave?

Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?

I should-old Ocean's Saturnalian days
And roaring nights of revelry and sport
With wreck and human woe-be loth to sing;
For they are few and all their ills weigh light
Against his sacred usefulness, that bids

Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.

Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive Their freshening dews, gay fluttering breezes cool Their wings to fan the brow of fevered climes, And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn For showers to glad the earth.

Old Ocean was

Infinity of ages ere we breathed

Existence and he will be beautiful

When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound

In thundering concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA.

FALLEN as he is, this king of birds still seems
Like royalty in ruins. Though his eyes
Are shut, that look undazzled on the sun,
He was the sultan of the sky, and earth

Paid tribute to his eyry. It was perched
Higher than human conqueror ever built

His bannered fort. Where Atlas' top looks o'er
Zahara's desert to the equator's line:

From thence the winged despot marked his prey,
Above th' encampments of the Bedouins, ere
Their watchfires were extinct, or camels knelt
To take their loads, or horsemen scoured the plain,
And there he dried his feathers in the dawn,
Whilst yet th' unwakened world was dark below.

There's such a charm in natural strength and power, That human fancy has for ever paid

Poetic homage to the bird of Jove.

Hence, 'neath his image, Rome arrayed her turms
And cohorts for the conquest of the world.
And figuring his flight, the mind is filled

With thoughts that mock the pride of wingless man.
True the carred aeronaut can mount as high;
But what's the triumph of his volant art?"

A rash intrusion on the realms of air.

His helmless vehicle, a silken toy,

A bubble bursting in the thunder-cloud;
His course has no volition, and he drifts

The passive plaything of the winds. Not such
Was this proud bird: he clove the adverse storm,
And cuffed it with his wings. He stopped his flight
As easily as the Arab reins his steed,

And stood at pleasure 'neath Heaven's zenith, like
A lamp suspended from its azure dome.

Whilst underneath him the world's mountains lay Like molehills, and her streams like lucid threads.