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National Lyrics, and Songs for Music/The Voice of the Waves

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THE VOICE OF THE WAVES.



WRITTEN NEAR THE SCENE OF A RECENT SHIPWRECK.



How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep,
    No mood, which season takes away or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
    Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
***********
But welcome fortitude and patient cheer,
    And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Wordsworth.


Answer, ye chiming waves!
    That now in sunshine sweep;
Speak to me from thy hidden caves,
    Voice of the solemn deep!
    
Hath man's lone spirit here
    With storms in battle striven?
Where all is now so calmly clear,
    Hath anguish cried to heaven?


—Then the sea's voice arose,
    Like an earthquake's under-tone:
"Mortal, the strife of human woes
    Where hath not nature known?

"Here to the quivering mast
    Despair hath wildly clung,
The shriek upon the wind hath past,
    The midnight sky hath rung.

"And the youthful and the brave
    With their beauty and renown,
To the hollow chambers of the wave
    In darkness have gone down.

"They are vanished from their place—
    Let their homes and hearths make moan!
But the rolling waters keep no trace
    Of pang or conflict gone."


—Alas! thou haughty deep!
    The strong, the sounding far!
My heart before thee dies,—I weep
    To think on what we are!

To think that so we pass,
    High hope, and thought, and mind,
Ev'n as the breath-stain from the glass,
    Leaving no sign[1] behind!

Saw'st thou nought else, thou main?
    Thou and the midnight sky?
Nought save the struggle, brief and vain,
    The parting agony!

—And the sea's voice replied,
    "Here nobler things have been!
Power with the valiant when they died,
    To sanctify the scene:


"Courage, in fragile form,
    Faith, trusting to the last,
Prayer, breathing heavenwards thro' the storm,
    But all alike have passed."

Sound on, thou haughty sea!
    These have not passed in vain;
My soul awakes, my hope springs free
    On victor wings again.

Thou, from thine empire driven,
    May'st vanish with thy powers;
But, by the hearts that here have striven,
    A loftier doom is ours!

  1. errata