THE VOICE OF THE WAVES.
WRITTEN NEAR THE SCENE OF A RECENT SHIPWRECK.
“How perfect was the calm! It seem’d no sleep,
No mood which season takes away or brings;
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
...
But welcome fortitude and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne.”
Wordsworth.
Answer, ye chiming waves
That now in sunshine sweep!
Speak to me from thy hidden caves,
Voice of the solemn deep!
Hath man’s lone spirit here
With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
Hath anguish cried to heaven?
—Then the sea’s voice arose
Like an earthquake’s under-tone:
“Mortal! the strife of human woes
Where hath not nature known?
“Here to the quivering mast
Despair hath wildly clung;
The shriek upon the wind hath pass’d,
The midnight sky hath rung.
“And the youthful and the brave,
With their beauty and renown,
To the hollow chambers of the wave
In darkness have gone down.
“They are vanish’d from their place—
Let their homes and hearths make moan!
But the rolling waters keep no trace
Of pang or conflict gone.”
—Alas! thou haughty deep!
The strong, the sounding far!
My heart before thee dies,—I weep
To think on what we are!
To think that so we pass—
High hope, and thought, and mind—
Even as the breath-stain from the glass,
Leaving no sign behind!
Saw’st thou naught else, thou main?
Thou and the midnight sky?
Naught save the struggle, brief and vain,
The parting agony!
—And the sea’s voice replied:
“Here nobler things have been!
Power, with the valiant when they died,
To sanctify the scene:
“Courage, in fragile form,
Faith, trusting to the last,
Prayer, breathing heavenwards thro’ the storm:
But all alike have pass’d.”
Sound on, thou haughty sea!
These have not pass’d in vain;
My soul awakes, my hope springs free
On victor wings again.
Thou, from thine empire driven,
May’st vanish with thy powers;
But, by the hearts that here have striven,
A loftier doom is ours!