Give me life strong and full as the brimming
ocean; give me thoughts wide as its plain. . . . My soul rising to
the immensity utters its desire-prayer with all the strength of the
sea."
In many of its aspects, the ocean can stimulate and soften
moods of sadness. The peculiar potency of the play of the
waves is reserved for the next chapter. But the more general
influences of this character are many and of undoubted
significance. The vast loneliness of its watery, restless plains;
its unchangeableness; its seeming disregard for human destinies;
the secrets buried under its heaving waters--these and a
multitude of like phenomena link themselves on to man's sadder
reveries. Morris asks:
"Peace, moaning sea; what tale have you to tell,
What mystic tidings, all unknown before?"
His answer is in terms of longing for the unrealised:
"The voice of yearning, deep but scarce expressed,
For something which is not, but may be yet;
Too full of sad continuance to forget,
Too troubled with desires to be at rest,
Too self-conflicting ever to be blest."
In strong contrast with this is the exhilarating, tonic power of
the sea. Coleridge, revisiting the seashore, cries:
"God be with thee, gladsome Ocean!
How gladly greet I thee once more."
Myers emphasises the fact that Swinburne, in his principal
autobiographical poem, "Thalassius, or Child of the Sea,"
reveals a nature for which the elemental play of the ocean is the
intensest stimulus.
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