The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles.
OCEAN
Ye waves
That o'er th' interminable ocean wreathe
Your crisped smiles.
The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land,
Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore.
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
The image of Eternity—the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers.
* * * * * *
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.
There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.
What are the wild waves saying,
Sister, the whole day long,
That ever amid our playing
I hear but their low, lone song?
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.
The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
Behold the Sea,
The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men:
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
The sea is flowing ever,
The land retains it never.
Alone I walked on the ocean strand,
A pearly shell was in my hand;
I stooped, and wrote upon the sand
My name, the year, the day.
As onward from the spot I passed,
One lingering look behind I cast,
A wave came rolling high and fast,
And washed my lines away.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.
There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never was seene nor never shall bee.
The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear
Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear
The faint, far murmur of the breakine flood.
We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood
In our own veins, impetuous and near.
