Poems: Old and New

by Frederick George Scott

 

TO THE SEA.

 
O STRANGE, sublime, illimitable Sea,
   Majestic in thy sovran self-control,
   And awful with the furious tides that roll
Round Earth’s proud cliffs, who bow their heads to thee;—
Thou art like God in thy vast liberty.
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    Thy throne is the wide world from pole to pole,
   Thy thunders are Time’s passing bell, and toll
The knell of all that has been, is, and is to be.

O mighty rock-bound spirit, bright to-day,
   To-morrow leaden ’neath the clouds of gloom,
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       Or mystic with the stars that overspan,—
Beneath thy billows, where the wild winds play,
   There broods a darkness deeper than the tomb,
      In caverns voiceless since the world began. [Page 138]