{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Reciter_Address_to_the_ocean/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Reciter_Address_to_the_ocean","id":"wikisource_The_Reciter_Address_to_the_ocean","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Reciter/Address_to_the_ocean","summary":null,"tags":["Chapbooks","Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Nature","Pages_with_contributor","Scottish_poetry","Subpages","Works_using_categories_parameter"],"text":"\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.\n\nThere is a pleasure in the pathless woods,\n\nThere is a rapture on the lonely shore,\n\nThere is society, where none intrudes,\n\nBy the deep Sea, and music in its roar:\n\nI love not Man the less, but Nature more,\nFrom these our interviews, in which I steal\n\nFrom all I may be, or have been before,\n\nTo mingle with the Universe, and feel\n\nWhat I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal.\n\nRoll on, thou deep and dark blue oceal---roll!\n\nTen thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;\n\nMan marks the earth with ruin---his control\n\nStops with the shore;---upon the watery plain\n\nThe wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain\n\nA shaddow of man's ravage, save his own,\n\nWhen, for a moment, like a drop of rain,\n\nHe sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,\n\nWithout a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown\n\nHis steps are not upon thy paths,---thy fields\n\nAre not a spoil for him,---thou dost arise\n\nAnd shake him from; the vile strength he wields\n\nFor earth's destruction thou doest all despise,\n\nSpurning him from thy bosom to the skies,\n\nAnd send'st him shivering in thy playful spra\n\nAnd howling, to his Gods, where haply lies\n\nHis petty hope in some near port or bay,\n\nAnd dashest him again to earth:---there let him lay.\n\nThe armaments which thunderstrike the walls\n\nOf rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,\n\nAnd monarches tremble in their capitals,\n\nThe oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make\n\nTheir clay creator the vain title take\n\nOf lord of thee, and arbiter of war;\n\nThese are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,\n\nThey melt into thy yeast of waves, which man\n\nAlike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.\n\nThy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-\n\nAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?\n\nThy waters wasted them while they were free,\n\nAnd many a tyrant since; their shores obey\n\nThe stranger, slave, or savage; their decay\n\nHas dried up realms to deserts:---not so thou,\n\nUnchangeable save to thy wild waves' play---\n\nTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow---\n\nSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.\n\nThou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form\n\nGlasses itself in tempests; in all time,\n\nCalm or convuls'd---in breeze, or gale, or storm,\n\nIcing the pole, or in the torrid clime\n\nDark-heaving;---boundless, endless, and sublime,\n\nThe image of Eternity---the throne\n\nOf the Invisible; even from out thy slime\n\nThe monsters of the deep are made; each zone\n\nObeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.\n\nAnd I have lov'd thee, Ocean! and my joy\n\nOf youthful sports was on thy breast to be\n\nBorne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy\n\nI wanton'd with thy breakers---they to me\n\nWere a delight; and if the freshening sea\n\nMade them a terror---'twas a pleasing fear,\n\nFor I was as it were a child of thee,\n\nAnd trusted to thy billows far and near\n\nAnd laid my hand upon thy mane---as I do here.\n\nFINIS.","title":"The Reciter/Address to the ocean","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":501}