The Unnamed Lake and Other Poems

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;—
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Thou art like God in thy vast liberty,
    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,
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    To-morrow leaden ’neath the clouds of gloom,
        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.
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