ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. No trace of time is left on thee, Created thus, and still to be. ་ Sea! of Almightiness itself the immense ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of Man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering, in thy playful spray, And howling, to his gods, where haply lies. His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay The armaments which thunderstrike the walls These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their deca y Has dried up realms to deserts :—not so thou, Unchangeable, save to the wild waves' play — Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.— Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. OCEAN APOSTROPHISED. 7 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form blime The image of Eternity-the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward :—from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear; For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here. : BYRON. OCEAN APOSTROPHISED. GREAT Ocean! strongest of creation's sons, That rolled the wild, profound, eternal bass, In nature's anthem, and made music such Loud uttering satire, day and night, on each Thou bowedst thy glorious head to none, fearedst none, Heardst none, to none didst honour, but to God Thy great obeisance! Undiscovered Sea! Beyond the arm of help, unheard, unseen, Sunk friend and foe, with all their wealth and war; A HYMN OF THE SEA. 9 And wondered still, and grasped, and grasped, and grasped Again, beyond her reach, exerting all The soul to take thy great idea in, To comprehend incomprehensible; And wondered more, and felt their littleness. Lover unchangeable, thy faithful breast For ever heaving to the lovely Moon, That, like a shy and holy virgin, robed In saintly white, walked nightly in the heavens, And to thy everlasting serenade Gave gracious audience: nor was wooed in vain. POLLOK'S "Course of Time." A HYMN OF THE SEA. 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, |