Ocean!
how I love to gaze
When a sunbeam o'err thee plays,
Sporting on thy bosom bold,
Tinging thy broad breast with gold.
Art thou not a wondrous thing,
Full of deep imagining?
Treasures rich thy caverns fill,
Treasures—all immortal still.
Ocean
! how I love to hear
Rippling wavelets soft and clear,
When the moonbeams glisten pale,
'Neath their spangled gauzy veil,
Breaking on the silver'd shore,
Flowing on for ever more;
Beauty doth thy gemm'd waves fill,
Every change is beauty still.
Ocean
! how I dread to mark
Waves beneath the storm grow dark,
Lashing like a furious thing,
Flapping
hoarse thy
snow-white wing,
Making lithe thy winding-sheet,
For the choicest of the fleet;
Gallant hearts thy dark depths fill,
Yet I love thee, Ocean! still.
Ocean
! be it calm or storm,
Still I trace one viewless Form;
See Him in the smiling waves
When the moon her bosom laves;
See
Him in the joyous light
When the morn shines blue and bright;
Hear Him, when rude winds rush by,
And the tempest hovers nigh—
He who when those depths He scanned,
Held the Ocean in His hand—
Bade them roll forth at His will,
And His might their vastness fill—
Much I love to gaze on thee,
For thou speak'st of God, thou Sea!
