Morris has given us a word-picture of similar import.
"Oh, look! the sea is fallen asleep,
The sail hangs idle evermore;
Yet refluent from the outer deep
The low wave sobs upon the shore.
Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills
Silent the broad weeds wave and sway;
Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray
Is born of surges vast as hills."
Jefferies gives us a companion picture of a calm sea in full sunshine. "Immediately in front dropped the deep descent of the bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the faint sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of the sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as though the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there was no distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it, and looked farther away than the horizon would have done."
In each of these seascapes, the same essential features find a place—the calm expanse without any defined boundary—the silence—the play of delicate colour—the suggestions of rest after toil, of peace after storm—and chiefest of all, the strangely moving contrast of power and gentleness, the suggestion of hidden strength. Doubtless we have in these the secret of much of the mystic influence of the mighty ocean in its serenest moods; doubtless we have in these the manifestations of immanent ideas which have subtle power to subdue the human soul to pensive thought and unwonted restfulness.
Not unlike them in general character and function, save for the element of vastness, are the influences immanent in the calm of evening or night landscapes. Goethe has an exquisite fragment which is a fitting pendent to his Meeresstille:
Ueber alien Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
Thus translated by Bowring:
"Hush'd on the hill
Is the breeze;
Scarce by the zephyr
The trees
Softly are pressed;
The woodbird's asleep on the bough.
Wait, then, and thou
Soon wilt find rest."
Who does not sympathise, in the measure possible to him, with Wordsworth's interpretations and premonitions?
"It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea."