Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast
(The storms all weathered and the ocean crossed)
Shoots into port at some well-havened isle,
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods, that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around her, fanning light her streamers gay ;-
So thou, with sails how swift! hast reached the shore
"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar.”
And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide
Of life long since has anchored by thy side.
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,
Always from port withheld, always distressed;
Me, howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed,
Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost;
And, day by day, some current's thwarting force
Sets me more distant from a prosperous course.
Yet O, the thought that thou art safe, and he!
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.

My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth:
But higher far my proud pretensions rise;
The son of parents passed into the skies.
And now, farewell! Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course, yet what I wished is done.
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again;
To have renewed the joys that once were mine,
Without the sin of violating thine;

And, while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft;
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

COWPER.

LESSON CV.

THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT.

"THE sea is his, and he made it," cries the Psalmist of Israel, in one of those bursts of devotion, in which he so often expresses the whole of a vast subject by a few simple words.

Whose else, indeed, could it be, and by whom else could it have been made? Who else can heave its tides, and appoint its bounds? Who else can urge its mighty waves to madness with the breath and the wings of the tempest, and then speak to it again with a master's accents, and bid it be still?

Who else could havé poured out its magnificent fullness round the solid land, and

“Laid, as in a storehouse safe, its watery treasures by?”

Who else could have peopled it with its countless inhabitants, and caused it to bring forth its various productions, and filled it from its deepest bed to its expanded surface; filled it from its center to its remotest shores; filled it to the brim, with beauty, and mystery, and power? Majestic ocean! Glorious sea! No created being rules thee, or made thee. Thou hearest but one voice, and that is the Lord's; thou obeyest but one arm, and that is the Almighty's. The ownership and the workmanship are God's; thou art his, and he made thee.

"The sea is his, and he made it." Its majesty is of God. What is there more sublime than the trackless, desert, all-surrounding, unfathomable sea? What is there more peacefully sublime than the calm, gently-heaving, silent sea? What is there more terribly sublime than the angry, dashing, foaming sea? Power, resistless, overwhelming power, is its attribute and its expression, whether in the careless, conscious grandeur of its deep rest, or the wild tumult of its excited wrath. It is awful, when its crested waves rise up to make a compact with the black clouds, and the howling winds, and the thunder, and the thunder-bolt, and they sweep on in the joy of their dread alliance, to do the Almighty's bidding. And it is awful, too, when it stretches its broad level out, to meet in quiet union the bended sky, and show, in the line of meeting, the vast rotundity of the world.

There is majesty in its wide expanse, separating and in closing the great continents of the earth, occupying two thirds of the whole surface of the globe, penetrating the land with its bays and secondary seas, and receiving the constantly pouring tribute of every river, of every shore. There is majesty in its fullness, never diminishing, and never increasing. There is majesty in its integrity, for its whole vast substance is uni

form; in its local unity, for there is but one ocean, and the inhabitants of any one maritime spot may visit the inhabitants of any other in the wide world. Its depth is sublime; who can sound it? Its strength is sublime; what fabric of man can resist it? Its voice is sublime, whether in the prolonged song of its ripple, or the stern music of its roar; whether it utters its hollow and melancholy tones, within a labyrinth of wave-worn caves; or thunders at the base of some huge promontory; or beats against a toiling vessel's sides, lulling the voyager to rest with the strains of its wild monotony; or dies away, with the calm and dying twilight, in gentle murmurs on some sheltered shore.

“The sea is his, and he made it." Its beauty is of God. It possesses it, in richness of its own; it borrows it of earth, and air, and heaven. The clouds lend it the various dyes of their wardrobe, and throw down upon it the broad masses of their shadows, as they go sailing and sweeping by. The rainbow laves in it its many-colored feet; the sun loves to visit it, and the moon, and the glittering brotherhood of planets and stars; for they delight themselves in its beauty. The sunbeams return from it in showers of diamonds and glances of fire; the moonbeams find in it a pathway of silver, where they dance to and fro, with the breeze and the waves, through the livelong night. It has a light, too, of its own, a soft and sparkling light, rivaling the stars; and often does the ship, which cuts its surface, leave streaming behind a milky way of dim and uncertain luster, like that which is shining dimly above.

What landscape is so beautiful as one upon the borders of the sea? The spirit of its loveliness is from the waters, where it dwells and rests, singing its spells, and scattering its charms on all the coast. What rocks and cliffs are so glorious, as those which are washed by the chafing sea? What groves, and fields, and dwellings are so enchanting, as those which stand by the reflecting sea?

If we could see the great ocean as it can be seen by no mortal eye, beholding at one view what we are now obliged to visit in detail, and spot by spot; if we could, from a flight far higher than the sea-eagle's, and with a sight more keen and comprehensive than his, view the immense surface of the deep, all spread out beneath us like a universal chart, what an infinite

variety such a scene would display! Here, a storm would be raging, the thunder bursting, the waters boiling, and rain, and foam, and fire, all mingling together; and there, next to this scene of magnificent confusion, we should see the bright blue waves glittering in the sun, and, while the brisk breezes flew over them, clapping their hands for very gladness; for they do clap their hands, and justify, by the life and almost individual animation which they exhibit, that remarkable figure of the Psalmist. Here, again, on this self-same ocean, we should behold large tracts, where there was neither tempest nor breeze, but a dead calm, breathless, noiseless, and, were it not for the swell of the sea, which never rests, motionless. Here, we should see a cluster of green islands, set like jewels in the midst of its bosom; and there, we should see the broad shoals and gray rocks, fretting the billows, and threatening the mariner.

"There go the ships," the white-robed ships; some on this course, and others on the opposite one; some just approaching the shore, and some just leaving it; some in fleets, and others in solitude; some swinging lazily in a calm, and some driven and tossed, and perhaps overwhelmed, by the storm; some for traffic, and some for state; some in peace, and others, alas, in war. Nor are the ships of man the only travelers whom we shall perceive on this mighty map of the ocean. Flocks of sea-birds are passing and repassing, diving for their food, or for pastime, migrating from shore to shore with unwearied wing and undeviating instinct, or wheeling and swarming round the rocks, which they make alive and vocal by their numbers and their clanging cries.

"The sea is his, and he made it." And when he made it, he ordained, that it should be the element and dwelling-place of multitudes of living beings, and the treasury of many riches. How populous, and wealthy, and bounteous are the depths of the sea! How many are the tribes which find in them abundant sustenance, and furnish abundant sustenance to man! In all its life, its variety and beauty, its sublimity and majesty, "the sea is his, and he made it."

GREENWOOD.

LESSON CVI.

(Elliptical.)*

THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE.

Nature.

DEAR Nature is the kindest mother still,
Though always changing, in her aspect, mild:
From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
Her never-weaned, though not her favorite (
Oh, she is (
) in her features wild,
Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:

To me by day or night she ever smiled,

).

Though I have (...) her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

BYRON.

WONDROUS, O, Nature! is thy sovereign power, That gives to horror hours of ( . . ) mirth; For here might Beauty build her summer bower. Lo! where yon rainbow spans the (...) earth, And, clothed in glory, through a silent shower, The ( ) sun comes forth, a godlike birth; While 'neath his loving eye, the gentle lake Lies like a sleeping child, too blest to (

HAIL, (

Light.

).

WILSON.

) light! offspring of heaven, first-born,

Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,

May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate!
Or hearest thou rather? pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell! Before the sun,
Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a (
) didst invest
The rising world of waters, dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

Ocean.

THOU glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed; in breeze, or gale, or storm,

*See Note prefixed to Lesson 82.

MILTON.