"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main."
But he was not thinking of this shore, when he added:—
"Till, in sheltered coves and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again."
These weeds were the symbols of those grotesque and fabulous thoughts which have not yet got into the sheltered coves of literature.
"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart,"
And not yet "in books recorded
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart."
The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea-jellies, which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one of the lowest forms of animal life, some white, some wine-colored, and a foot in diameter. I at first thought that they were a tender part of some marine monster, which the storm or some other foe had mangled. What right has the sea to bear in its bosom such tender things as sea-jellies and mosses, when it has such a boisterous shore, that the stoutest fabrics are wrecked against it? Strange that it should undertake to dandle such delicate children in its arm. I did not at first recognize these for the same which I had formerly seen in myriads in Boston Harbor, rising, with a waving motion, to the surface, as if to meet the sun, and discoloring the waters far and wide, so that I seemed to be sailing through a mere sun-fish soup. They say that when you endeavor to take one up, it will spill out the other side of your hand like
