ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARD'S.
HAIL to thy face and odours, glorious Sea! "Twere thanklessness in me to bless thee not, Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world! Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din To me is peace, thy restlessness repose.
Ev'n gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes With all the darling field-flowers in their prime, And gardens haunted by the nightingale's Long trills and gushing ecstasies of song,
For these wild headlands, and the sea-mew's clang
With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea, I long not to o'erlook earth's fairest glades And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in:
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half-way o'er it like a wearied bird: It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their hosts within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can see themselves at once.
Of rural landscape are there lights and shades Of more harmonious dance and play than thine. How vividly this moment brightens forth, Between gray 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.
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 For marshalling thy waves
How placidly thy moist lips speak ev'n 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 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
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
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 drist
Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by
Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the
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.
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 some-
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 re
Their freshening dews, gay fluttering breezes cool Their wings to fan the brow of fever'd climes, And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn For showers to glad the earth.
Infinity of ages ere we breathed Existence and he will be beautiful
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