The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

Eternity of waters! there Thou art,
Dear to the eye, and glorious to the heart;
Bounding in brightness as they plunge on shore,
I greet thy waves, and gladden in their roar.

Alone in grandeur, ever-living Sea!
Thou swelling anthem sung to Deity,
When thy deep thunders with a dying fall
Roll like Hosannahs to the Lord of All.

Religion only to thy power replies
And echoes back the solemn harmonies,
Which seem to tell with supernatural tone,—
Here God is reigning on His ocean-throne!

And ever, O thou Element of might!
Hast thou administer'd a dread delight
To all who heard thy loud pulsations beat,
Till shores embay'd seem'd throbbing at their feet.

Before the birth of billow, or of wind,
Thou rolledst through the Everlasting Mind
In waves hereafter destined to expand,
And bathe the shores of many a famous land.

Man rules the earth, but God upon the sea
By vast distinction doth appear to be,
Whose swelling glories baffle change and time,
And awe the conscience, like a creed sublime.

Kindred with man, deep Ocean! movest thou,
Baring to heaven thine ever-dauntless brow;
In all the murmurs of thy mighty heart
A mystic echo of his mind thou art.

Passion intense, and sentiment profound
In thee some answer to such moods resound;
While haunted Sadness, tender, deep, and lone,
Thrills to the pathos of thy pensive tone.

Genius and Glory, both in thee delight,
Heard in gay morn, or through the hush of night,
When, like a psalm, thy billowy tongues proclaim
How nature murmurs with her Maker's name.

And has not Painting from thy myriad views
Of liquid grace, and oceanic hues,
An inspiration for her colours caught,
Making immortal what thy spell has wrought?

The Poet, too, in ev'ry age hath been
A solemn haunter of thy wizard scene;
In breeze, or blast, rich noon, or balmy eve,
To him thy waves cathedral-anthems weave.

He can interpret thine impassion'd mood,
And sympathise with sea-made solitude;
By rock and bay, or sanded beach can roam
And feel immensity his proper home.

Nor need we tell how Commerce hath supplied
An empire's storehouse from the wafting tide,
Since on thy waters, far as winds can flee,
Her boundless treasures are attain'd by Thee.

Still less doth Valour need victorious lyres
To sing how Britain's heart the sea inspires:—
The Isle of Freedom is the friend of waves,
That field of battle where the world she braves!

And will not heroes of the Cross who roam,
Far from the spells which bind the heart to home,
To tell the heathen how the Lord is King,
Chants of true glory to old Ocean bring?—

Majestic, lone, and melancholy Sea!
Sprung from thy God in dread immensity,
For aye art thou to reverential mind
A floating wonder by no words defined.

A vast eternity in endless flow
Thine image wears; and in thy depths below
How sleep the young, the beautiful, and brave,
Till the last trumpet shall unclose their grave!

Farewell! thou symbol of almighty grace,
Whose deeps adumbrate what for our lost race
Mercy provides, when pardon's hush'd abyss
Engulphs the guilt which loads a world like this.

Eternal seem'st thou till th' Archangel rings
A blast that summons all created things;
Then rise the dead from out thy dismal roar,
And Time shall gaze upon the sea no more!