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,     That moved in the beginning o'er his face,     Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves     To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall.     Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up,     As at the first, to water the great earth,     And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms     Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind,     And in the dropping shower, with gladness hear     Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth     Over the boundless blue, where joyously     The bright crests of innumerable waves     Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands     Of a great multitude are upward flung     In acclamation. I behold the ships     Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle,     Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening home     From the old world. It is thy friendly breeze     That bears them, with the riches of the land,     And treasure of dear lives, till, in the port,     The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail.     But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face     The blast that wakes the fury of the sea?     Oh God! thy justice makes the world turn pale,     When on the armed fleet, that royally     Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite     Some city, or invade some thoughtless realm,     Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks     Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the sails     Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts     Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks,     Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf,     Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed     In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed     By whirlpools, or dashed dead upon the rocks.     Then stand the nations still with awe, and pause,     A moment, from the bloody work of war.     These restless surges eat away the shores     Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain     Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down,     And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets     Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar     In the green chambers of the middle sea,     Where broadest spread the waters and the line     Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work,     Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm     To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age,     He builds beneath the waters, till, at last,     His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check     The long wave rolling from the southern pole     To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires,     That smoulder under ocean, heave on high     The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks,     A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird.     The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts     With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs     Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers,     Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look     On thy creation and pronounce it good.     Its valleys, glorious with their summer green,     Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods,     Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join     The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.