University of Virginia Library

The vital Word went forth: “Be fruitful, Seas!
“Bring forth abundantly.”—Earth! on thy face
Dwells gladness: and thy green lap gifts with food
Fair creatures in their kind: but 'neath thy turf
Lies the dark realm untenanted. Thou, Deep!
Teem'st animate throughout, sea beneath sea
Continuous birth. Enormous forms uncouth
Heave on the main, and upward gazing, spout
The briny fount. But who hath told the race
Under the green wave gliding? Part, below,
Haunt: other part, at season due, move forth,
Not without charge shaping their yearly course,
To feed earth's barren regions. Witness, ye,
On Drontheim's pine-crown'd steeps! and that bold race
In bosom of the melancholy main:
Rude natives of the rocks, whose bleak heights gaze
On Caledonia's howling head-lands wild:
The sterile residence, where no hill top
Waves verdure—ye, rejoice! No longer chase
On cliffs, whose dizzy brows o'erarch the flood,
The fierce and clamorous sea-fowl: tempt no more
Dark caves where wild kinds gender. Golden suns
Invite: 'tis peace, and silence on the sea.
The ice-chain of the northern Deep gives way;
Forth burst the nations. Ocean gleams afar:
The many-colour'd main has lost its hue
Cerulean. Where the vast migration heaves,
Wing'd flights o'erhang their banquet, vast of size
Beneath, on either flank, the swoln whale preys
Insatiate: nathless, far and wide, and deep,
Column on column, furrowing up the flood,
Rolls onward, and each isle and peopled rock
Rings like a hamlet feast at harvest home.