Lines To The Ocean
Old Ocean, none knoweth thy story;
Man cannot thy secrets unfold,
Thy blue waves sing songs of thy glory
But where are thy treasures untold?
Are they hidden away in the mosses
And sea-weed that covers thy bed?
O tell us, where are all our losses,
Our gold and our gems and our dead?
O where are the loved ones who perished,
Who found in thy bosom their grave?
O where are the fond hopes so cherished
That sank 'neath thy cold, cruel wave?
Ships loaded with jewels unnumbered
Have sunk in thy waters from sight,
While passengers, e'en while they slumbered,
Were lost in thy cold cheerless night.
Down deep in thy depths they are buried,
NO more on the earth will they shine.
Far, far, from our reach they are carried
To rest in the Ocean's vast mine.
Thou hast them, old Ocean, and mortals
Can never take from thee thy prey;
In thee did they find the tomb's portals,
And none knew the spot where they lay.
None knoweth? One sees where they slumber,
And greater than thine is His will;
He seeth thy gems without number,
He speaks and thy breakers are still.
There is One who hath had in all ages,
Dominion o'er sea and o'er land;
He ruleth the sea when it rageth,
He holdeth the deep in his hand.
Roll on, chilly wave and fierce breaker,
And guard the vast stores of thy bed;
'Till at the command of their Maker,
The waters shall give up their dead.
Lily of the Nile
Queenly lily, fair and fragrant,
I have watched thy charms unroll
'Till thy gold embossed scepter
Gleams against thy spotless scroll.
Stately Ethiopian princess
From thy realm a fair exile
Vieing with the rose in sweetness.
Queenly lily of the Nile.
Lovely in thy child-like beauty,
Yet majestic in thy pride;
Could'st thou be more sweetly gracious
Nodding by the river side?
Breath like zephyrs freshly laden
From some flower-wreathed ocean isle;
Snow-white Ethiopian maiden,
Modest lily of the Nile.
Dost thou feel no pang of longing,
Dost thou breathe no weary sigh
For thy native, Orient splendor-
For thy native, sunlit sky?
Far away, thou knowest not whither,
Many, many a weary mile,
Thy fair sisters bloom and wither,
Stately lily of the Nile.
Bloom beneath the palm-tree's shadow
Just along the river's brink,
Where gay birds, with brilliant plumage
Soar to sing, and stoop to drink.
Plucked by Egypt's dark-eyed daughters
To adorn some granite pile-
Fresher from their native waters,
Snowy lily of the Nile.
'Midst those scenes of Eastern splendor
Thy ancestral race began-
Where the night of heathen darkness
Spread abroad its withering ban;
Yet no spot of man's transgressing
Could thy purity defile,
Looking heavenward for each blessing,
Saintly lily of the Nile.
Did they view thy purer glory
With their darkened minds unawed?
Did they learn of thee no lesson
Of the power and love of God?
Like a spotless, white-winged angel
Sent to them untouched by guile,
Did they spurn thy glad evangel,
Spotless lily of the Nile?
O, could they have looked from Nature
Unto Nature's God alone,
Would they not have scorned to worship
Images of wood and stone?
Would they not, thy beauty seeing,
Have looked up in faith erewhile
To the God who gave thee being
Matchless lily of the Nile?
The Depths
Sublime and wonderful art thou, O deep,
Illustrious ocean, vast unmeasured waste!
Lost in thy contemplation, I do seem
Even as a grain of sand upon thy beach,
That shouldst thou reach thy giant arms to grasp
Would melt away in thy dissolving foam,
Nor yet be missed among the myriads left;
Yet in thy calms and tempests, I can read
The moods and passions of the human soul;
Nor are they changing winds and tides more real
That those that sweep and sway the depths of thought.
Calm is thy breast today, thou fitful main,
And yet perchance before the eastern star
Sheds o'er thy surface her supernal beams,
High on yon crags thy maddened spray shall dash
And the wild roar of elemental war
Shall cause the dwellers on thy cliffs to quake
And the brave mariner to grow sick at heart.
Why is this murmuring, this wild unrest?
This never-ending conflict with thyself,
As if thou wouldst burst through thy massive gates
And fling thy treasures through celestial space,
Strew the pale Occident with coral sprays
And the blue zenith with ten-thousand gems;
Or scatter pearls throughout the Orient flames;
Or yet go seething through yon crested heights
And with a voice like Gabriel's trumpet, tell
The pent-up secrets of thy hidden depths
Unto the flaming beacon of the day?
'Tis vain- with all thy vast gigantic power,
Thou canst but cast a few frail treasures forth,
Perchance a seaweed spray or tinted shell,
Dripping and glistening from thy briny surf,
Cast out upon the sands, that wheresoe'er
Fate or caprice may bear its fragile form,
A whispered song from its pink lips is heard
That seems to speak of caverns deep and lone
Sunk in thy heaving bosom, restless sea,
That eye hath never seen, nor yet a ray
From the bright flickering lamps of Heaven has pierced.
Thus do the surges of the spirit rise
And dash against their narrow prison walls,
Clap their rapt wings and long for liberty;
Or in a vague unrest beat to and fro,
Forever striving to yield up the things
That pent in their own beings will not rest
Ah! like the sea, they only render up
Perchance a thought from out their hidden caves,
That, like the sea-shell, murmurs of the depths
That slept before undreamed of far below;
Within the human soul lie depths as deep
As ever slept within the ocean's breast,
And heights that rise beyond the breaker's crest
In the vain wish to pass their narrow bound.
Lo, o'er the depths of ocean and of soul
Breathes forth a voice that calms their wild unrest:
'Peace, be thou still,' 'to me thou shalt yield up,
The garnered fullness of thy hidden things;
To me the deep shall pour her treasures out;
To me the ocean shall her secrets tell;
At my command the sea shall burst her gates
And the chained treasures of the depths come forth;'
So shall the soul break forth at last in song;
So shall her pent-up longings be unloosed
To sweep adown the aisles of endless time;
So shall the depths therein in endless praise
Pour out their garnered fullness unto God.
The Cavern By The Sea
The tropical islands of Tonga
In the Southern Pacific sea lie
Like fragments of cool rainbow color
Dropped down from the melting blue sky.
They are gardens of clustering palm trees
Of creepers and tall waving fronds,
Flowers, colored by sunshine and sea-breeze,
Fruits, painted by tropical dawns.
In these beautiful islands of Tonga
Dwelt a chieftain, young, stalwart and brave,
Who dived like a fish in the ocean
And rose with the foam on the wave.
One morning while swimming and diving
He ventured so deep by the shore
That he rose in a wonderful cavern
Which had never been heard of before.
A cavern that no one could enter
But by diving deep down in the sea,
And stalactites hung from the center
And sides of its arched canopy.
No sunbeam illumined its arches,
No moonbeam lay on its stone floor,
Its pale pensive light was reflected
From the depths of its watery door.
Bright sea-shells and fragments of coral
And seaweed in chaplet and spray
Cast up by the waves' angry quarrel
In ledges and crevices lay.
The chieftain, transfixed in his wonder,
Gazed long with his dark eager eyes,
Like a warrior rejoiced o'er his plunder
He spoke to his wonderful prize.
'Thou art mine, O my beautiful palace!
No other my secret shall know,
My refuge from envy and malice,
I tell not my friend of my foe;
For a secret revealed to a brother
That hour is a secret no more,
One wave whispers low to another
And the surges speak loud on the shore.'
There was silence once more in the cavern
Then a splashing of sea-foam and wave
And the daring young chief of the Tonga
Rose up from his submarine cave.
Time passed and a ryler tyrannic
Reigned over the peaceful domain,
So cruel was he that a panic
Spread over the isles in his reign.
One chief planned a great insurrection
And well were his secret plans laid
When the news spread in every direction
That the deeply laid scheme was betrayed.
And he who had planned insurrection
And all of his family with him
Were sentenced to speedy destruction
By the dreadful, tyrannical king.
This chief had a beautiful daughter
Betrothed to a chief of high rank,
Like a great stone cast into the water
At the dread news her happy heart sank.
The youth who discovered the cavern
Had long loved the damsel in vain,
So he brought her the news of her danger
Which inspired him with hope once again.
He begged her to trust him to save her,
Though his terrible peril he knew
Naught but hope of their safety he gave her
As they fled in their little canoe.
On the way he described the lone cavern,
The place of their hasty retreat,
'Till he paused where the rocks towerd above them
And told her to lay at her feet.
With warcries the island resounded
'Till the birds hushed their songs in affright
Then a yell as of victory sounded;
Had the dread king discovered their flight?
Dim forms on the shore became clearer,
Then the splashing of heavy canoes
Just behind sounded nearer and nearer,
They had not a moment to lose.
These women can swim like the mermaids
And dive like the fish in the sea;
So the young chief sprang into the water
'Follow me.'
Down, down through the shadowy water,
With her hair streaming out on the tide,
Sank the great chieftain's beautiful daughter
With the young island chief at her side.
A splashing of waves and then silence,
By the gray rock an empty canoe;
And they rose in the wonderful cavern
That none but the young chieftain knew.
It was fifty feet high at the center
And the widest part, fifty feet wide;
What foeman could ever there enter
To harm the young maid or her guide?
And here the chief hid his brave lady
'Till the angry king gave up the chase
In the great cavern, silent and shady,
Lit but by the sea and her face.
And here to her palace he carried
Costly clothing, food, mats and perfume,
And none knew what treasure was buried
In the great cavern's silence and gloom.
And here by his kindness and daring
His love to the maiden he proved
And won for his bride the fair damsel
Whom long without hope he had wooed.
Meanwhile he prepared for a voyage
With all of his tribe to depart
From the land of a cruel oppressor,
The islands still dear to his heart.
At last they embarked all in safety
Unknown to the treacherous king,
He told them to wait in the shadow
And his bride from the sea he would bring.
He dived at the foot of the boulder,
His wondering tribe waited amazed
And half (each astonished beholder)
Believed that the chieftain was crazed.
Alarmed at his long disappearance
His people began to deplore,
O, surely the young chief had perished!
And they waited in fear by the shore.
A sound like the rushing of water,
A sparkling of foam from the tide
And the gallant young chief of the Tongas
Rose up from the sea with his bride.
Her dark hair streamed over the water,
Her eyes shone like stars in the blue;
And the dead chieftain's beautiful daughter
Was safe in her waiting canoe.
In a far distant kingdom they rested
'Till the cruel oppressor was dead,
Then returned to their homes unmolested
Where a better king reigned in his stead.
And long in their palm islands, shady
Dwelt the chieftain, so noble and brave,
With his tribe, and his beautiful lady
Whom he hid in the deep ocean cave.
