Oh! the salt Atlantic breezes,
How they sweep reviving through me;
How their freshening spirit seizes
Soul and sense, to raise, renew me!
Oh! the grand Atlantic surges,
How they march, and mount, and mingle;
How their spray, exulting, scourges
Jutty cliff and sandy dingle!
Talk of melancholy ocean, —
If thou feelest wane and wither
Every germ of glad emotion,
Come, O Vivian Grey! come thither.
Sit and mark the matchless glory
Of the clouds that overshade us,
Afreets of the Eastern story,
Titans such as Keats portrayed us, —
Till majestically blending,
Folded on the western billow,
They await their lord's descending,
Strewing his imperial pillow.
Not in youth's intoxication,
Not in manhood's strange successes,
Didst thou drink an inspiration
Such as here the heart confesses.
Here, where joy surrounds thee wholly,
If thy thought a moment listens
To intruding melancholy,
It is born of reminiscence, —
Of the old forsaken causes,
Of the higher fame's bereavement,
Of a lifetime of applauses,
Barren, barren of achievement;
Genius in ignoble traces,
Leading ranks whom thou despisest,
Till thy self-willed fate effaces
All that in thy soul thou prizest;
For the prophet's fire and motion,
Icy mask and sneer sardonic, —
Be it so. — Majestic Ocean,
Thou art melancholy's tonic.
