THE LIFE OF THE SEA.
BY B. SIMMONS.
"A very intelligent young lady, born and bred in the Orkney islands, who lately came to spend a season in this neighbourhood, told me nothing in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as woods and trees. She found them so dead and lifeless, that she never could help pining after the eternal motion and variety of the ocean. And so back she has gone; and I believe nothing will ever tempt her from the wind-swept Orcades again."—Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart's Life, vol. ii.—[Although it is of a female this striking anecdote is related, it has been thought more suitable to give the amplified expression of the sentiment in the stanzas a masculine application.]
I.
These grassy vales are warm and deep,
Where apple-orchards wave and glow;
Upon soft uplands whitening sheep
Drift in long wreaths.—Below,
Sun-fronting beds of garden-thyme, alive
With the small humming merchants of the hive,
And cottage-homes in every shady nook
Where willows dip and kiss the dimples of the brook.
II.
But all too close against my face
My thick breath feels these crowding trees,
They crush me in their green embrace.—
I miss the Life of Seas;
The wild free life that round the flinty shores
Of my bleak isles expanded Ocean pours—
So free, so far, that, in the lull of even,
Naught but the rising moon stands on your path to heaven.
III.
In summer's smile, in winter's strife,
Unstirr'd, those hills are walls to me;
I want the vast, all-various life
Of the broad, circling Sea,—
Each hour in morn, or noon, or midnight's range,
That heaves or slumbers with exhaustless change,
Dash'd to the skies—steep'd in blue morning's rays—
Or back resparkling far Orion's lovely blaze.