THE SEA

by: John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895)

hat dost thou say,

Thou old grey sea,

Thou broad briny water

To me?

With thy ripple and thy plash,

And thy waves as they lash

The old grey rocks on the shore?

With thy tempests as they roar,

And thy crested billows hoar,

And thy tide evermore,

Fresh and free;

With thy floods as they come,

And thy voice never dumb,

What thouhgt art thou speaking to me?

What thing should I say

On this bright summer day,

Thou strange human dreamer, to thee?

One wonder the same

All things do proclaim

In the sky, and the land, and the sea;

'Tis the unsleeping force

Of a GOD in his course,

Whose life is the law of the whole,

As he breathes out his power

In the pulse of the hour,

And the march of the years as they roll;

You may measure his ways

In the weeks and the days,

And the stars as they wheel round the pole,

But no finger is thine

To touch the divine

All-plastic, all-permeant soul,

As it shapes and it moulds,

And its virtue unfolds,

In the garden of things as they grow,

And flings forth the tide

Of its strength far and wide,

In wonders above and below.




Thou huge-heaving sea

That art speaking to me

Of the power and the pride of a God,

I would travel like thee

With force fresh and free

Through the breadth of my human abode,

Never languid and low,

But with bountiful flow,

Of thoughts that are kindred to God;

Ever surging and streaming,

Ever beaming and gleaming,

Like the lights as they shift on the glass,

Ever swelling and heaving,

And largely receiving

The beauty of things as they pass.




Thou broad-billowed sea

Never sundered from thee

May I wander the welkin below;

May the plash and the roar

Of thy waves on the shore

Beat the march to my feet as they go;

Ever strong, ever free,

When the breath of the sea

Like the fan of an angel I know;

Every rising with power,

To the call of the hour,

Like the swell of thy tides as they flow.

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