Julia Alpinula :: :: University of Virginia Library

All is still but the wind on the wave,
The minute-beat of the ocean's pulse!
All is at rest but the hoarser rave
Of rushing tides which the walls repulse,—
That mighty voice, that hollow sound
From all the mustering billows round,
Heaved in a mass from realm to realm,
As if the floods which erst did whelm
The universal earth, were yet
Not all assuaged, nor could forget
How, in their rushing might, went down,
Temple on temple, tower on town,
The lofty mountains wild and wide
With all their snows upon them,—Pride
In his communion with the stars,—
Battle, with all his crests and cars,—
All, all the Omnipotent created,
And none were left of millions, none
But Pyrrha and Deucalion,
To watch the waves as they abated,
And smile, amid their wilderness,

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When the first star of their new night
Put forth from clouds, its lonely light
As Venus dimly does on this.
With thoughts like theirs, Eudora sate,
Her eye upon the roaring strait;
Earth, was, to her, that vacant ball,
And she the only left of all.
But yet not wholly left:—a strain
Is heard from Passion's sweetest string;
To the Genii of the main,
Is it that sister-spirits sing!
Is it that the sea-shell rings
With the west-wind's visitings,
Now just hushed,—now mildly waking
Sounds which the hoarse sea is breaking,
And breathing now, when it seemed o'er,
A heavenlier strain than all before!