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146

XXIII. PHOSPHORESCENT SEA. (II.)

As when the face of one thought dead
Breaks into ghastly life again,
The sea becomes a fiery plain
Of flames, blue, yellow, green, and red;
Each wave seems some drown'd mariner
Upheaved from depths that no winds stir:
Surely the sea has long since died,
And now lies rotting, putrefied.
 

A repetition of the metaphor in lines eleven and twelve of page 24, The Human Inheritance.