University of Virginia Library

THE SEA-SHORE.

Come, gentle phantasie,
Come to my lone retreat,
Beside the rolling sea,
Where the playful billows beat:
Come at still twilight's time,
When the star of evening beams above,
And looks on earth with a look of love,
From her far cerulean clime;
And on the shore
The waters' roar
Shall to our ears rough music make,
And sweet shall be
Their melody,
As the wind doth o'er them break.
Now fades the daylight o'er the deep,
And now the struggle and the strife,
The cares and toils of busy life,
Sink for awhile in sleep:
And she, Thought's pallid queen,
Arises on her gentle way,
Scattering far her tremulous ray
With calm and holy sheen.
Now is the hour when Feeling wakes,
Now is the hour when Fancy takes
Her far and heavenward flight;
Now every evil passion dies,
Now Hope lifts up her gentle eyes—
O lovely hour of night!
I gaze upon the roaring sea,
And vague deep thoughts crowd o'er my mind.
There lies the dread immensity,
And o'er the region of the wind
Lies an immensity more dread,
On which the thought can not repose,
Whose secrets we can not disclose—
O! happy, happy dead!
Perchance to you your God has given
To know the secrets of the heaven,
On angels' wings afar to fly,
And scan the wonders of the sky;
And often, 'mid the darkness dim,
The soul forgets its feeble shell,
As if 'twould pierce the ways of Him
Whose ways no human heart can tell.
The soul expands, as if to see
If it can grasp Eternity,
And pass the bounds of time and space—
But, ah! there is no resting-place
For such adventurous flight.
These are the aspirings of the spirit
To the home it shall inherit;
A dim, faint dream,
A feeble gleam
Of what the soul may be when pass'd this earthly night.