University of Virginia Library

What dost thou say,
Thou old grey sea,
Thou broad briny water
To me?
With thy ripple and thy plash,
And thy waves as they lash
The old grey rocks on the shore?
With thy tempests as they roar,
And thy crested billows hoar,
And thy tide evermore,
Fresh and free;
With thy floods as they come,
And thy voice never dumb,
What thought art thou speaking to me?
What thing should I say
On this bright summer day,
Thou strange human dreamer, to thee?
One wonder the same
All things do proclaim
In the sky, and the land, and the sea;
'Tis the unsleeping force
Of a God in his course,
Whose life is the law of the whole,
As he breathes out his power
In the pulse of the hour,
And the march of the years as they roll;
You may measure his ways
In the weeks and the days,
And the stars as they wheel round the pole,
But no finger is thine
To touch the divine
All-plastic, all-permeant soul,
As it shapes and it moulds,
And its virtue unfolds,
In the garden of things as they grow,
And flings forth the tide
Of its strength far and wide,
In wonders above and below.

Thou huge-heaving sea
That art speaking to me
Of the power and the pride of a God,
I would travel like thee
With force fresh and free
Through the breadth of my human abode,
Never languid and low,
But with bountiful flow,
Of thoughts that are kindred to God;
Ever surging and streaming,
Ever beaming and gleaming,
Like the lights as they shift on thy glass,
Ever swelling and heaving,
And largely receiving
The beauty of things as they pass.
Thou broad-billowed sea
Never sundered from thee
May I wander the welkin below;
May the plash and the roar
Of thy waves on the shore
Beat the march to my feet as they go;
Ever strong, ever free,
When the breath of the sea
Like the fan of an angel I know;
Ever rising with power,
To the call of the hour,
Like the swell of thy tides as they flow.