The strain—such as it is—ceases suddenly with this Stanza; and the Poet having thus got done with it, exclaiming "and I have loved thee, Ocean," proceeds forthwith to a different matter altogether—to the pleasure he was wont to enjoy, when a boy, in swimming among the breakers. The verses are in themselves very spirited; but we must think—and hope so do you—very much out of place, and a sad descent from the altitude attempted, and believed by the Poet himself to have been attained, in the preceding Stanza about the Almighty.
Why, listening Neophyte, recite both Stanzas, and then tell us whether or no you think they maybe improved by being put into—our Prose. We do not seek thereby to injure what Poetry may be in them, but to bring it out and improve it.
"Thou glorious Mirror, in which, when black with tempests, Fancy might conceive Omnipotence imaged in visible reflection!—Thou Sea, that in all thy seasons, whether smooth or agitated, whether soft or wild wind blow, in all thy regions, icy at the Pole, dark-heaving at the Equator, ever and every where callest forth our acknowledgment that Thou art illimitable, interminable, sublime; that Thou art the symbol of Eternity—(like a circle by returning into itself;) that Thou art the visible Throne of the Invisible Deity—Thou whose very dregs turn into enormous life—Thou who, possessing the larger part of every zone, art thus a King in every zone; Thou takest thy course around the Earth,—great by thine awfulness, by thine undiscoverable depth, by thy solitude!
"And I, thy Poet, was of old thy Lover! In young years my favourite disport was to lie afloat on thy bosom, carried along by Thee, passive, resigned to Thy power, one of Thy bubbles. A boy, Thy waves were my playmates, or my playthings. If, as the wind freshened, and they swelled, I grew afraid, there was a pleasure even in the palpitation of the fears, for I lived with Thee and loved Thee, even like a child of Thine, and believed that Thy billows would not hurt me, and laid my hand boldly and wantonly on their crests—as at this instant I do, here sitting upon the Alban Mount—and making (as they say) a long arm."
Ha! The Dinner-Gong!
Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests—the hieroglyph generally known to the well educated.
[2] Lucian, The Dream of Micyllus.