TO THE SEA.
An Expostulation.
Oh, smooth and smiling! I have loved thee well!
Hymned thee, and heard thee; lived beneath thy spell;
For years thy life-giving ozone have bless'd,
That makes loose garments tighter round the chest.
Paced in the dark thy sounding margent white,
And voiced my rapture in the boisterous night,
Striking the lurking coastguard with affright.
Now on my barque—ah, no! no barque be mine!
On the new packet of the Angler Line,
I learn, too late, when fairly out at sea,
How well they speak who speak not well of thee
Implacable, inscrutable Emirs
Mock not the captured foe of bloodstained years
As thou hast mock'd one who ne'er did thee wrong,
Save in the venial fault of unexpressive song.
Or canst thou this unmeasured vengeance take,
Remembering some childish duck-and-drake,
Forgotten long, and never done in spite?
How could it harm thy navy-rending might,
Thou, whose huge waves in wanton affluence bang
Their heads against the rocks, in mid-air hang,
Up the sheer cliffs clamber with foamy claws,
And backward plunge again, with mad applause
Of all the turbulent, tumultuous press
That hurl themselves to spray in wantonness?
Prone, but unconquered, I have roll'd to leeward,
Soothed by the merciless mercy of the steward.
How can I stand when hardest steel and teak
Play a vertiginous game of hide-and-seek?
All is a-swing and dipping and a-roll.
Oh, vain material creed! Th' informing soul!
Proves well its immateriality,
Defying thus the tortures of the sea,
That force all else to helpless surrender;
For aught but very Spirit would prefer
To seek at once the illimitable inane,
Than cognisant of anguish thus remain
The tenant of a desolated shrine,
A bare clay cabin, like this frame of mine.
Oh, rich saloons! Oh, rooms of wretched state!
The pomp and glory of you all I hate!
Ye fulsome diving dados, would ye were
Extinct as your vocabular congener!
Place me where errant icebergs, anchored deep
By chains of frost, a darkling vigil keep,
Fixed in the pole's impenetrable wall,
Dead to the warmer ocean's roving call!
Far from this liquid way that heaves and rolls,
This world-long switchback, bounded by the poles,
This path of pain, whose undulations cease
Only in that palæocrystic peace!
Nay, what is this? How steady! Here we are!
Field breezes mingle with the oil and tar,
And with a shudder I behold anear
The solid weed-hung timbers of the pier.
Perfidious sea! I'll trust thee never more,
And mock thy fury safely from the shore.