Related quotes: GOD girt her about with...

New Zealand

GOD girt her about with the surges
And winds of the masterless deep,
Whose tumult uprouses and urges
Quick billows to sparkle and leap;
He filled from the life of their motion
Her nostrils with breath of the sea,
And gave her afar in the ocean
A citadel free.

Her never the fever-mist shrouding,
Nor drought of the desert may blight,
Nor pall of dun smoke overclouding
Vast cities of clamorous night,
But the voice of abundance of waters,
Cold rivers that stay not or sleep,
Greets children, the sons and the daughters
Of light and the deep.

Lo! here where each league hath its fountains
In isles of deep fern and tall pine,
And breezes snow-cooled on the mountains,
Or keen from the limitless brine,
See men to the battlefield pressing
To conquer one foe—the stern soil,
Their kingship in labour expressing,
Their lordship in toil.

Though young they are heirs of the ages,
Though few they are freemen and peers,
Plain workers—yet sure of the wages
Slow Destiny pays with the years.
Though least they and latest their nation,
Yet this they have won without sword—
That Woman with Man shall have station,
And Labour be lord.

The winds of the sea and high heaven
Speed pure to her kissed by the foam;
The steeds of her ocean undriven,
Unbitted and riderless roam,
And clear from her lamp newly lighted
Shall stream o’er the billows upcurled
A light as of wrongs at length righted,
Of hope to the world.

poem by William Pember Reeves
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A life on the ocean wave

A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an eagle caged, I pine
On this dull, unchanging shore:
Oh! give me the flashing brine,
The spray and the tempest's roar!

Once more on the deck I stand
Of my own swift-gliding craft:
Set sail! farewell to the land!
The gale follows fair abaft.
We shoot through the sparkling foam
Like an ocean-bird set free; -
Like the ocean-bird, our home
We'll find far out on the sea.

The land is no longer in view,
The clouds have begun to frown;
But with a stout vessel and crew,
We'll say, Let the storm come down!
And the song of our hearts shall be,
While the winds and the waters rave,
A home on the rolling sea!
A life on the ocean wave!

poem by Epes Sargent
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Palinodia

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse
Unbroken by the petty incidents
Of noisy life: Oh hear me once again!

Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,
Above the murmur of the uneasy world,
My thoughts in exultation held their way:
Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade
Were once to me unearthly tones of love,
Joy without object, wordless music, stealing
Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast
With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire-
Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep
Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,
Of silent labour, and eternal change;
First teacher of the dense immensity
Of ever-stirring life, in thy strange forms
Of fish, and shell, and worm, and oozy weed:
To me alike thy frenzy and thy sleep
Have been a deep and breathless joy: Oh hear!

Mountains, and winds, and waves, take back your child!
Upon thy balmy bosom, Mother Nature,
Where my young spirit dreamt its years away,
Give me once more to nestle: I have strayed
Far through another world, which is not thine.
Through sunless cities, and the weary haunts
Of smoke-grimed labour, and foul revelry
My flagging wing has swept. A mateless bird's
My pilgrimage has been; through sin, and doubt,
And darkness, seeking love. Oh hear me, Nature!
Receive me once again: but not alone;
No more alone, Great Mother! I have brought
One who has wandered, yet not sinned, like me.
Upon thy lap, twin children, let us lie;
And in the light of thine immortal eyes
Let our souls mingle, till The Father calls
To some eternal home the charge He gives thee.

poem by Charles Kingsley
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Arethusa

I.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;--
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

II.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks—with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.
And the beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph’s flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

III.
'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!'
The loud Ocean heard,
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth’s white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:—
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,--
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

IV.
Under the bowers
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest’s night:--
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the Ocean’s foam,
And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.

V.
And now from their fountains
In Enna’s mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;--
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.

poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples

I.
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

II.
I see the deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,--
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

III.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned--
Nor fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure,
Others I see whom these surround--
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;--
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

IV.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have born and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament -- for I am one
Whom men love not,-- and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The Ocean

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

~ Psalm cvii. 23, 24.

HE that in venturous barks hath been
A wanderer on the deep,
Can tell of many an awful scene,
Where storms for ever sweep.

For many a fair, majestic sight
Hath met his wandering eye,
Beneath the streaming northern light,
Or blaze of Indian sky.

Go! ask him of the whirlpool's roar,
Whose echoing thunder peals
Loud, as if rushed along the shore
An army's chariot wheels;

Of icebergs, floating o'er the main,
Or fixed upon the coast,
Like glittering citadel or fane,
'Mid the bright realms of frost;

Of coral rocks, from waves below
In steep ascent that tower,
And fraught with peril, daily grow,
Formed by an insect's power;

Of sea-fires, which at dead of night
Shine o'er the tides afar,
And make th' expanse of ocean bright
As heaven, with many a star.

Oh God! thy name they well may praise,
Who to the deep go down,
And trace the wonders of thy ways,
Where rocks and billows frown.

If glorious be that awful deep,
No human power can bind,
What then art Thou, who bidst it keep
Within its bounds confined!

Let heaven and earth in praise unite,
Eternal praise to Thee,
Whose word can rouse the tempest's might,
Or still the raging sea!

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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A Summons

MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime!
What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
God and our charter?
Here shall the statesman forge his human fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights deny,
And in the church, their proud and skilled abettors.
Make truth a lie?
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God?
Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
Day after day?
Oh no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains;
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie;
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky;
From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges; from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows' motion
Round rock and cliff;
From the free fireside of her unbought farmer;
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel;
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer,
Rings the red steel;
From each and all, if God hath not forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken
A People's voice.
Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;
And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it
Within her grave.
Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar shall smile,
And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,
Bless us the while.
Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!
Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,
Maintain the right!

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Genesis BK III

(ll. 135-143) The day departed, hasting over the dwellings of
earth. And after the gleaming light the Lord, our maker, thrust
on the first of evenings. Murky gloom pressed hard upon the
heels of day; God called it night. Our Lord sundered them, one
from the other; and ever since they follow out the will of God to
do it on the earth.

(ll. 143-153) Then came a second day, light after darkness. And
the Lord of life ordained a pleasant firmament amid the waters.
Our Lord sundered the seas and established the heavens. By His
word the King, Almighty God, raised them above the earth. The
waters were divided under the heavens by His holy might; the
waters were sundered from the waters, under the firmament.

(ll. 154-168) Then came hasting over the earth the third fair
morning. Not yet were the wide ways and spacious tracts useful
unto God, but the land lay covered by the deep. The Lord of
angels, by His word, commanded that the waters come together,
which now beneath the heavens hold their course and place
ordained. Then suddenly, wide-stretching under heaven, lay the
sea, as God gave bidding. The great deep was sundered from the
land. The Warden of life, the Lord of hosts, beheld the dry
ground far outspread. And the King of glory called it earth.
For the ocean-billows and the wide-flung sea He set a lawful path
and lettered them....

((LACUNA -- two to three leaves missing))

poem by Caedmon
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The Merchant Ship

The Sun o’er the waters was throwing
In the freshness of morning its beams;
And the breast of the ocean seemed glowing
With glittering silvery streams:
A bark in the distance was bounding
Away for the land on her lee;
And the boatswain’s shrill whistle resounding
Came over and over the sea.
The breezes blew fair and were guiding
Her swiftly along on her track,
And the billows successively passing,
Were lost in the distance aback.
The sailors seemed busy preparing
For anchor to drop ere the night;
The red rusted cables in fathoms
Were haul’d from their prisons to light.
Each rope and each brace was attended
By stout-hearted sons of the main,
Whose voices, in unison blended,
Sang many a merry-toned strain.
Forgotten their care and their sorrow,
If of such they had ever known aught,
Each soul was wrapped up in the morrow—
The morrow which greeted them not;
A sunshiny hope was inspiring
And filling their hearts with a glow
Like that on the billows around them,
Like the silvery ocean below.
As they looked on the haven before them,
Already high looming and near,
What else but a joy could invade them,
Or what could they feel but a cheer?

The eve on the waters was clouded,
And gloomy and dark grew the sky;
The ocean in blackness was shrouded,
And wails of a tempest flew by;
The bark o’er the billows high surging
’Mid showers of the foam-crested spray,
Now sinking, now slowly emerging,
Held onward her dangerous way.
The gale in the distance was veering
To a point that would drift her on land,
And fearfully he that was steering
Look’d round on the cliff-girdled strand.
He thought of the home now before him
And muttered sincerely a prayer
That morning might safely restore him
To friends and to kind faces there.
He knew that if once at the mercy
Of the winds and those mountain-like waves
The sun would rise over the waters—
The day would return on their graves.

Still blacker the heavens were scowling,
Still nearer the rock-skirted shore;
Yet fiercer the tempest was howling
And louder the wild waters roar.
The cold rain in torrents came pouring
On deck thro’ the rigging and shrouds,
And the deep, pitchy dark was illumined
Each moment with gleams from the clouds
Of forky-shap’d lightning as, darting,
It made a wide pathway on high,
And the sound of the thunder incessant
Re-echoed the breadth of the sky.
The light-hearted tars of the morning
Now gloomily watching the storm
Were silent, the glare from the flashes
Revealing each weather-beat form,
Their airy-built castles all vanished
When they heard the wild conflict ahead;
Their hopes of the morning were banished,
And terror seemed ruling instead.
They gazed on the heavens above them
And then on the waters beneath,
And shrunk as foreboding those billows
Might shroud them ere morrow in death.

Hark! A voice o’er the tempest came ringing,
A wild cry of bitter despair
Re-echoed by all in the vessel,
And filling the wind-ridden air.
The breakers and rocks were before them
Discovered too plain to their eyes,
And the heart-bursting shrieks of the hopeless
Ascending were lost in the skies.
Then a crash, then a moan from the dying
Went on, on the wings of the gale,
Soon hush’d in the roar of the waters
And the tempest’s continuing wail.
The “Storm Power” loudly was sounding
Their funeral dirge as they passed,
And the white-crested waters around them
Re-echoed the voice of the blast.
The surges will show to the morrow
A fearful and heartrending sight,
And bereaved ones will weep in their sorrow
When they think of that terrible night.

The day on the ocean returning
Saw still’d to a slumber the deep—
Not a zephyr disturbing its bosom,
The winds and the breezes asleep.
Again the warm sunshine was gleaming
Refulgently fringing the sea,
Its rays to the horizon beaming
And clothing the land on the lee.
The billows were silently gliding
O’er the graves of the sailors beneath,
The waves round the vessel yet pointing
The scene of their anguish and death.
They seemed to the fancy bewailing
The sudden and terrible doom
Of those who were yesterday singing
And laughing in sight of their tomb.

’Tis thus on the sea of existence—
The morning begins without care,
Hope cheerfully points to the distance,
The Future beams sunny and fair;
And we—as the bark o’er the billows,
Admiring the beauty of day,
With Fortune all smiling around us—
Glide onward our silvery way.
We know not nor fear for a sorrow
Ever crossing our pathway in life;
We judge from to-day the to-morrow
And dream not of meeting with strife.
This world seems to us as an Eden
And we wonder when hearing around
The cries of stern pain and affliction
How such an existence is found.
But we find to our cost when misfortune
Comes mantling our sun in its night,
That the Earth was not made to be Heaven,
Not always our life can be bright.
In turn we see each of our day-dreams
Dissolve into air and decay,
And learn that the hopes that are brightest
Fade soonest—far soonest away.

poem by Henry Kendall
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Lars

"Tell us a story of these Isles," they said,
The daughters of the West, whose eyes had seen
For the first time the circling sea, instead
Of the blown prairie's waves of grassy green:

"Tell us of wreck and peril, storm and cold,
Wild as the wildest." Under summer stars
With the slow moonrise at our back, I told
The story of the young Norwegian, Lars.

That youth with the black eyebrows sharply drawn
In strong curves like some sea-bird's wings outspread
O'er his dark eyes, is Lars, and this fair dawn
Of womanhood, the maiden he will wed.

She loves him for the dangers he has past.
Her rosy beauty glowed before his stern
And vigilant regard, until at last
Her sweetness vanquished Lars the taciturn.

For he is ever quiet, strong, and wise;
Wastes nothing, not a gesture nor a breath;
Forgets not, gazing in the maiden's eyes,
A year ago it was not love, but death,

That clasped him, and can hardly learn as yet
How to be merry, haunted by that pain
And terror, and remembering with regret
The comrade he can never see again.

Out from the harbor on that winter day
Sailed the two men to set their trawl together.
Down swept the sudden snow-squall o'er the bay,
And hurled their slight boat onward like a feather.

They tossed they knew not whither, till at last,
Under the lighthouse cliff they found a lee,
And out the road-lines of the trawl they cast
To moor her, is so happy they might be.

But quick the slender road-lines snapt in twain
In the wild breakers, and once more they tossed
Adrift; and, watching from his misty pane,
The lighthouse keeper muttered, "They are lost!"

Lifted the snow: night fell; swift cleared the sky;
The air grew sharp as death with polar cold;
Raged the insensate gale, and flashing high
In starlight keen the hissing billows rolled.

Driven before the winds incessant scourge
All night they fled, -- one dead ere morning lay.
Lars saw his strange, drawn countenance emerge
In the fierce sunrise light of that drear day,

And thought, "A little space and I shall be
Even as he," and, gazing in despair
O'er the wide, weltering waste, no sign could see
Of hope, of help, or comfort, anywhere.

Two hundred miles before the hurricane
The dead and living drove across the sea.
The third day dawned. His dim eyes saw again
The vast green plain, breaking eternally

In ghastly waves. But in the early light,
On the horizon glittering like a star,
Fast growing, looming tall, with canvas white,
Sailed his salvation southward from afar!

Down she bore, rushing o'er the hills of brine,
Straight for his feeble signal. As she passed,
Out from the schooner's deck they flung a line,
And o'er his head the open noose was cast.

Clutching with both his hands the bowline knot
Caught at his throat, swift drawn through fire he seemed,
Whelmed in the icy sea, and he forgot
Life, death, and all things, -- yet he thought he dreamed

A dread voice cried, "We've lost him!" and a sting
Of anguish pierced his clouded senses through;
A moment more, and like a lifeless thing
He lay among the eager pitying crew.

Long time he swooned, while o'er the ocean vast
The dead man tossed alone, they knew not where:
But youth and health triumphant were at last,
And here is Lars, you see, and here the fair

Young snow-and-rose-bloom maiden he will wed.
His face is kindly, thought it seems so stern.
Death passed him by, and life begins instead,
For Thora sweet and Lars the taciturn.

poem by Celia Thaxter
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Rocked In The Cradle Of The Deep

Rocked in the cradle of the deep
I lay me down in peace to sleep;
Secure I rest upon the wave,
For Thou, O Lord! hast power to save.
I know Thou wilt not slight my call,
For Thou dost mark the sparrow's fall;
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

When in the dead of night I lie
And gaze upon the trackless sky,
The star-bespangled heavenly scroll,
The boundless waters as they roll, -
I feel Thy wondrous power to save
From perils of the stormy wave:
Rocked in the cradle of the deep,
I calmly rest and soundly sleep.

And such the trust that still were mine,
Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine,
Or though the tempest's fiery breath
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.
In ocean cave, still safe with Thee
The germ of immortality!
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

poem by Emma Hart Willard
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Who Do You Think I Am?

The look of light forming through his eyes
As he asked the immortal question;
The voice of a thousand-winds
Gathering into the Milky-Way;

A pure silver sliver of sentiment
Passes between us... thin as a breath, and deep as light,
And for just the briefest moment
There is no distinction
Between the living, and the dead,
For all here have arisen singing
With the new sun;

With tears in eyes
And the heartbeat of all the ages
Thumping deep,
Every angel holds it's breath...
Awaiting, the human response...

poem by Smoky Hoss
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The Home Of The Spirit

Answer me, burning stars of night,
Where is the spirit gone,
That past the reach of human sight,
As a swift breeze hath flown?
And the stars answer'd me: 'We roll
In light and power on high;
But of the never-dying soul
Ask that which cannot die.'

O many-toned and chainless wind,
Thou art a wanderer free;
Tell me if thou its place canst find,
Far over mount and sea?
And the wind murmur'd in reply:
'The blue deep I have cross'd,
And met its barks and billows high,
But not what thou hast lost.'

Ye clouds that gorgeously repose
Around the setting sun,
Answer - Have ye a home for those
Whose earthly race is run?
The bright clouds answer'd: 'We depart,
We vanish from the sky;
Ask what is deathless in thy heart
For that which cannot die.'

Speak, then, thou voice of God within,
Thou of the deep low tone;
Answer me, through life's restless din -
Where is the spirit flown?
And the voice answer'd: 'Be thou still;
Enough to know is given;
Clouds, winds, and stars
their
part fulfil;

Thine
is to trust in Heaven.'

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Deep Deep Ocean

I heard you call my name
Why do you sit in silence
When theres a whole world waiting
Between these islands
I lay my love down to make you this bridge
But when the tide runs out
Im still at the waters edge
Theres a deep deep ocean
I want to find out what you hide inside of that
Deep deep ocean
Whats it take for you to be satisfied
You walk alone at night
So secretive and quiet
I hear the roar of your heartbeat
So why do you deny it
Hold me and show me my love cant be wrong
And Ill be swept away
By the storm beneath your calm
Theres a deep deep ocean
I want to find out what you hide inside of that
Deep deep ocean
Whats it take for you to be satisfied
If you keep holdin back emotion
One of us might drown in this deep deep ocean
Whats it gonna take
Whats it gonna be
When you gonna break and open up to me

song performed by by Belinda Carlisle
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I've Come Down to the Ocean

I've come down to the ocean;
The ocean great and wide,
Of pure blue span
And soft white sand
And the beach's crashing tide.

I've come down to the ocean;
The sea so black and queer
Of lightless dark
And fiercest shark,
Where even fearless fear.

I've come down to the ocean;
The waters I can't grasp,
Of strangest deep,
And sunless sleep,
Where the breathing may not gasp.

I've come down to the ocean;
To sing its sea-spray song,
Of salty brine
And waves that shine
Before I've been too long.

poem by Lizzy Anon
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Release Me

I release you with me, this time,
The sea is an ocean beneath following division.
It was the eighth second in that hour
When someone knew danger of the deep.
My daughters and my sons relish the song
Of the deep, over you and me.
I put my feet in the deep, high in the ocean,
Walking like a spaceman, in the hours.
My release shall intimidate, fully awaking you,
The sea has brethren so desired and sprung.

poem by Naveed Akram
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Silence

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

poem by Thomas Hood
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On the Bay

When the salt wave laps on the long, dim shore,
And frets the reef with its windy sallies,
And the dawn's white light is threading once more
The purple firs in the landward valleys,
While yet the arms of the wide gray sea
Are cradling the sunrise that is to be,
The fisherman's boat, through the mist afar,
Has sailed in the wake of the morning star.

The wind in his cordage and canvas sings
Its old glad song of strength and endeavor,
And up from the heart of the ocean rings
A call of courage and cheer forever;
Toil and danger and stress may wait
Beyond the arch of the morning's gate,
But he knows that behind him, upon the shore,
A true heart prays for him evermore.

When a young moon floats in the hollow sky,
Like a fairy shallop, all pale and golden,
And over the rocks that are grim and high,
The lamp of the light-house aloft is holden;
When the bay is like to a lucent cup
With glamor and glory and glow filled up,
In the track of the sunset, across the foam,
The fisherman's boat comes sailing home.

The wind is singing a low, sweet song
Of a rest well won and a toil well over,
And there on the shore shines clear and strong
The star of the homelight to guide the rover:
And deep unto deep may call and wail
But the fisherman laughs as he furls his sail,
For the bar is passed and the reef is dim
And a true heart is waiting to welcome him!

poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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A River of Orange

A river of the freshest orange makes her way towards my all,
I am the ocean of karma waters within which she may fall.

Here I swim within myself to honour the perfection of my bodies aspirations,
Here I swim within myself as a thousand spirits sour upon the joy of respiration.

A land of emerald grace hath absorbed the seed of faith and grown
Towards such magnificent proportions that I would never have believed
Had I not know that I would never be deceived by such angelic forms.

A bridge across the ocean casts shadow down upon the waters below,
The monsters of the deep stir in bubbling hibernation for the day,
They wait as the monsters of sleep their time to rise, their time to feed.

I am one alone within the waters orange, un-able to see below the surface,
Unable to see beyond my faith I am left as upon a raft of hope for happiness.
No one hath ever seen the land to which the bridge leads us in his direction
Yet in the distance the silhouette of hills are notated by the erection of their heads,
They too cast their shadow upon the waters deep though not a sun is there in the sky.

Am I to remain upon this voyage for eternity’s duration or am I to land upon those
Distant shores of promise that I was offered in the state of dreamtime wandering?
Have I left my love ones behind to no avail or is there reason for my failings in love?
For here, alone and still upon a karma tide I feel as one with the ocean all,
I feel as though I could fall into the sky and swim just as I feel as though
I have the power to move the mountains, arranging circles out of ancient stone.

The sky is an ocean deep and I’ll never swim whilst I sleep again.
The sky is an ocean deep and I’ll never swim whilst I sleep again.

poem by David Lacey
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Genesis BK XXI

l. 1327) Then our Lord said unto Noah:

(ll. 1328-1355) "I give thee My pledge, dearest of men, that thou
mayest go thy way, thou and the seed of every living thing which
thou shalt ferry through the deep water for many a day in the
bosom of the ship. Lead on board the ark, as I bid thee, thy
household, thy wife and thy three sons, and thy sons' wives with
thee. And take within that sea-home seven of every kind of
living thing that serve as food for men, and two of every other
kind. Likewise of all the fruits of the earth take food for the
company upon thy ship, who with thee shall be saved from the
flood! Care well for every creature until I shall cause food to
grow again beneath the heavens for the survivors of the ocean
floods. Depart now with thy household and thy host of guests,
embarking on the ship. I know that thou art good, and of a
steadfast mind. Thou art worthy of grace and mercy, thou and thy
children. Lo! for seven nights I shall let the rains descend
upon the face of the broad earth. Forty days will I visit My
wrath upon men, with a deluge destroying the riches of the world
and the tribes of men, save what shall be upon the ark when the
black floods begin to rise."

(ll. 1356-1371) And Noah departed, as the Lord commanded,
embarking his household upon the ark, leading up his sons into
the ship, and their wives with them. All that Almighty God would
have for seed went in under the roof of the ark unto their
food-giver, even according as the Mighty Lord of hosts gave
bidding by His word. And the Warden of that heavenly kingdom,
the God of victories, locked the door of the ocean-house behind
him with His hands, and our Lord blessed all within the ark with
His blessing. Now Noah, the son of Lamech, had lived six hundred
winters, wise and full of years, when he went up with the young
men, his beloved sons, into the ark, as God gave bidding.

(ll. 1371-1399) Then the Lord sent the rains from heaven, and
caused the black sea-streams to roar, and the fountains of the
deep to overflow the world. The seas surged up over the barriers
of the shore. Mighty in His wrath was He who rules the waters!
And He overwhelmed and covered the mortal sons of sin with a
black deluge, laying waste the native land and homes of men. God
visited their offences upon them. Forty days and forty nights
the sea laid hold on that doomed folk. Dire was that disaster
and deadly unto men. The stormy surges of the King of glory
quenched the life from out the bodies of that sinful host. The
flood, raging beneath the heavens, covered over all high hills
throughout the spacious earth, and lifted up the ark from the
earth upon the bosom of the waters, and all within the ark, whom
the Lord our God had blessed when He locked the door of the ship.
Then far and wide that best of ocean-houses and its burden
floated beneath the heavens over the compass of the sea. The
raging terrors of the deep might not lay hold on ship or
mariners, but Holy God ferried them upon the sea and shielded
them. Fifteen cubits deep upon the hills the deluge lay. That
was a grievous fate!

(ll. 1400-1406) But no harm came nigh unto the ark, save that it
was lifted up to heaven, when the flood destroyed all creatures
on the earth; but Holy God, the Eternal King, the Lord of heaven,
stern of heart, preserved the ark when He unleashed the ocean
currents and their changing streams.