I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, I too have a hole in a hollow tree; And I like less when Summer beats With stifling beams on these retreats, For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin; And polar frost my frame defied, With glad remembrance of my debt, Thou first and foremost shalt be fed; The Providence that is most large Takes hearts like thine in special charge, Helps who for their own need are strong, And the sky doats on cheerful song. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; As t'would accost some frivolous wing, I think old Cæsar must have heard I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, Paan! Veni, vidi, vici. SEA-SHORE. I HEARD or seemed to hear the chiding Sea Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come? Am I not always here, thy summer home? Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve? My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? Was ever building like my terraces? Was ever couch magnificent as mine? Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn A little hut suffices like a town. I make your sculptured architecture vain, Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab Older than all thy race. Behold the Sea, The opaline, the plentiful and strong, And, in my mathematic ebb and flow, Giving a hint of that which changes not. Rich are the sea-gods: - who gives gifts but they? They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls: They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise. For every wave is wealth to Dædalus, Wealth to the cunning artist who can work This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves! A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift? I with my hammer pounding evermore Strewing my bed, and, in another age, Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out Men to all shores that front the hoary main. I too have arts and sorceries; Illusion dwells forever with the wave. I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal With credulous and imaginative man; For, though he scoop my water in his palm, A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. |