A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/The Ocean (Les Châtiments, Victor Hugo)
It resembles thee; pacific yet dread,
A level under the Infinite spread;
It moves, 'tis immense, 'tis soothed by a ray,
And kindled to wrath by Zephyr at play;
'Tis music or discord: sweet is its song,
Or hoarse its shriek as complaining of wrong;
Monsters at ease sleep in its depths dark-green;
The water-spout germinates there unseen;
It has gulfs unknown, 'neath its surface plain,
And those who visit them come not again;
It lifts ships colossal and hurls them down
As thou hurlest despots. Black is its frown;
The beacon above it shines like the light
Thou hast from heaven, thy steps to guide right;
It caresses and chides if soft its mood
Or angry, but by no man understood
Is its humour. Like the terrible shock
Of armour clangs its wave on the rock;
Night listens with awe to the portentous sound
As it feels that, like thee, the depth profound
Having roared at eve, shall destroy at morn,
For the wave is a sword. Venus when born
It hails with a hymn, immense and sublime,
Which has resounded through æons of time:
Its universal blue, its wide wide expanse
Shelters the stars that there tremble and dance;
It has a rude force, a mercy superb,
For it roots up a rock, and spares an herb;
It throws like thee on proud summits its foam;
Inconstant, it loves round the world to roam;
Only—it never deceives when, with eye
Fixed on its surface, one watches it nigh
From some rock or the sands, pensive, alone,
Spell-bound by its murmur, grand, monotone;
It never deceives, for though it is free
It obeys a high law unceasingly;
It never deceives, for true to the hour
Rises its tide, O People, in power,
Overwhelming, resistless, and fierce to devour.