HYMN TO THE SEA. WHO shall declare the secret of thy birth, Through the vast silence stirred, Thou and the earth, twin sisters, as they say, The summer hours away, Curling thy loving ripples up her quiet shore. She is a married matron long ago With nations at her side; her milk doth flow Each year; but thee no husband dares to tame, Thy sole and virgin throne Thy mood is ever changing-thy resolve the same. Sunlight and moonlight minister to thee;- Heaven's two great lights forever set and rise; In vast and silent love Is gazing down upon thee with his hundred eyes. All night thou utterest forth thy solemn moan, Then in the morning thou dost calmly lie His day-work hath begun. Under the opening windows of the golden sky. The spirit of the mountain looks on thee With a sight-baffling shroud, Daughter and darling of remotest eld— Time's childhood, and Time's age thou hast beheld; His arm is feeble, and his eye is dim; He tells old tales again, He wearies of long pain Thou art as at the first thou journiedst not with him. HENRY ALFORD. O HOLY SEA! O CRADLE of the rising sun, O holy sea! O thou in balmy nights outspreading the crystal mirror a silent nun, - O holy sea! O thou in silent midnights chiming, through thy wide realm, sweet unison, With starry choirs, O holy sea! The morning's and the evening's red bloom out from thee, Two roses of thy garden-bed, O holy sea! O Amphitrite's panting bosom, whose heavy waves Now swell, now sink, beneath the moon, O holy sea! O Aphrodite's womb maternal! bring forth thy child, And borrow splendor from thy son, O holy sea! Sprinkle the earth's green wreath of spring with pearly dew, For thine the pearls are, every one, O holy sea! The Naiads of the meadows all, that sprang from thee, Come back as Nereids at thy call, O holy sea! The ships of thought sail over thee and sink in thee; Atlantis rests there, mighty one, O holy sea! The beaker of the gods, that fell from high Olympus, Hangs on the coral-twigs, far down, O holy sea! My spirit yearneth like the moon to sink in thee; Forth send me from thee like the sun, O holy sea! From the German of RüCKERT. HYMN TO THE SEA. ALONG yon soft tumultuousness, the dawn Reaches a glowing hand, and the mute world In on its dreaming heart, feels the forlorn Old Shadow lift, and guardedly discloses Its wayside cheer; and endless waves away And quenchless possibility of Day; Day, that at least shall win far more than darkness loses. Over those morning waves, or when the bare Stars glow, or moon her tireless lover nears, The eternal Beauty, that, these countless years, Makes earthly musings so divinely fair, Broods, listening to the prophecy thou chantest;- Is she wooing us unto right In unsuspected ways—a light From inmost heaven, tempered to dreaming eyesA sweet foreshadow of the joy for which thou pantest. Roll in from far thy deep, broad-skirted thunder, But night adopts and trances it away. Thy voice is born - what caverns rude Still haunt it- and if the Infinite ALONE I am borne outward by this fragrant breeze, Which seems to press its warm lips to the sand And then away,-beyond the singing land, To that hoar silence of the lone mid-seas, Where thou, in unrelated strength, a bare, Vast heart, throbbest beneath the eternal Eye. Life soars like an enfranchised flame; The needy doubt, the hope, that came Before the laggard dawn to wake me, -fly; And dim Eternity flows in, like silent air. Do tempests swing thee, or deep, choral nights Waftest the dismal burthen on, As trusting in the love that waits aloft, And the slow germ of good in man's unquiet heart. |