Classic Poem

So to the sea we came; the sea, that is
A world of waters heapèd up on high,
Rolling like mountains in wide wilderness,
Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry.
"And is the sea (quoth Coridon) so fearful?'
"Fearful much more (quoth he) than heart can fear:
Thousand wild beasts with deep mouths gaping direful
Therein still wait poor passengers to tear.
Who life doth loathe, and longs death to behold,
Before he die, already dead with fear,
And yet would live with heart half stony cold,
Let him to sea, and he shall see it there.
And yet as ghastly dreadful, as it seems,
Bold men, presuming life for gain to sell,
Dare tempt that gulf, and in those wandring streams
Seek ways unknown, ways leading down to hell.
For, as we stood there waiting on the strond,
Behold! an huge great vessel to us came,
Dauncing upon the waters back to lond,
As if it scorned the daunger of the same;
Yet was it but a wooden frame and frail,
Gluèd togither with some subtile matter.
Yet it had arms and wings, and head and tail,
And life to move it self upon the water.
Strange thing! how bold and swift the monster was,
That neither car'd for win, nor hail, nor rain,
Nor swelling waves, but thorough them did pass
So proudly, that she made them roar again.
The same aboard us gently did receive,
And without harm us far away did bear,
So far that land, our mother, us did leave,
And nought but sea and heaven to us appear.
Then heartless quite, and full of inward fear,
That shepheard I besought to me to tell,
Under what sky, or in what world we were,
In which I saw no living people dwell.
Who, me recomforting all that he might,
Told me that that same was the regiment
Of a great shepheardess, that Cynthia hight,
His liege, his lady, and his life's regent.--
"If then (quoth I) a shepheardess she be,
Where be the flocks and herds, which she doth keep?
And where may I the hills and pastures see,
On which she useth for to feed her sheep?'
"These be the hills (quoth he), the surges high,
On which fair Cynthia her heards doth feed:
Her heards be thousand fishes with their fry,
Which in the bosom of the billows breed.
Of them the shepheard which hath charge in chief,
Is Triton, blowing loud his wreathèd horn:
At sound whereof, they all for their relief
Wend to and fro at evening and at morn.
And Proteus eke with him does drive his heard
Of stinking seals and porcpisces together,
With hoary head and dewy dropping beard,
Compelling them which way he list, and whether.
And I among the rest, of many least
Have in the Ocean charge to me assign'd;
Where I will live or die at her beheast,
And serve and honour her with faithful mind.
Besides an hundred nymphs all heavenly born,
And of immortal race, do still attend
To wash fair Cynthia's sheep, when they be shorn,
And fold them up, when they have made an end.
Those be the shepheards which my Cynthia serve
At sea, beside a thousand moe at land:
For land and sea my Cynthia doth deserve
To have in her commandëment at hand. . . .'