Classic Poem

Though here no towering mountain-steep
Leaps, forest-crowned, to meet the sky;
Nor prairie, with majestic sweep,
Enchants the gazer's roaming eye,—

Yet ocean's glittering garden-bed,
Summer and winter, cheers the sight:
Its rose, the sun, at noon flames red;
The moon, its lily, blooms by night.

The white-winged ships, in fleet career,
Like sea-birds o'er the ocean skim;
They rise, glide on, and disappear
Behind the horizon's shadowy rim.

So sail the fleets of clouds; and so
Stars rise, and climb the heavens, and set,
Like human thoughts, that come and go—
Whence—whither—no man knoweth yet.

Far onward sweeps the billowy main;
To meet it bends th' o'erarching sky:
Of God's vast being emblems twain;
Deep unto deep gives glad reply.

These open, each, a broad highway;
To endless realms the soul invite:
The trackless ocean-floor by day,
The star-lit stairs of heaven by night.

Oh, enviable lot! to dwell
Surrounded by the great-voiced sea,
Whose waves intone, with trumpet-swell,
The hymn of Law and Liberty!