I love (oh! how I love) to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me;
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;

And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,

Full fifty summers a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend, and power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he come to me,

Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (BARRY CORNWALL).

I found a shell,

And to my listening ear the lonely thing

Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,

Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.

How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say

Whether there dropped by some too careless hand, Or whether there cast when Ocean swept the Land, Ere the Eternal had ordained the Day?

Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,
One song it sang-

Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide—
Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.

And as the shell upon the mountain height
Sings of the sea,

So do I ever, leagues and leagues away,-
So do I ever, wandering where I may,-

Sing, O my home! Sing, O my home! of thee.