The shower of moonlight falls as still and clear

Upon this desert main

As where sweet flowers some pastoral garden cheer

With fragrance after rain:

The wild winds rustle in piping shrouds,

As in the quivering trees:

Like summer fields, beneath the shadowy clouds

The yielding waters darken in the breeze.

Thou too art here with thy soft inland tones,

Mother of our new birth;

The lonely ocean learns thy orisons,

And loves thy sacred mirth:

When storms are high, or when the fires of war

Come lightening round our course,

Thou breath’st a note like music from afar,

Tempering rude hearts with calm angelic force.

Far, far away, the homesick seaman’s hoard,

Thy fragrant tokens live,

Like flower-leaves in a previous volume stor’d,

To solace and relieve

Some heart too weary of the restless world;

Or like thy Sabbath Cross,

That o’er this brightening billow streams unfurl’d,

Whatever gale the labouring vessel toss.

Oh, kindly soothing in high Victory’s hour,

Or when a comrade dies,

In whose sweet presence Sorrow dares not lower,

Nor Expectation rise

Too high for earth; what mother’s heart could spare

To the cold cheerless deep

Her flower and hope? but Thou art with him there,

Pledge of the untir’d arm and eye that cannot sleep:

The eye that watches o’er wild Ocean’s dead,

Each in his coral cave,

Fondly as if the green turf wrapt his head

Fast by his father’s grave, —

One moment, and the seeds of life shall spring

Out of the waste abyss,

And happy warriors triumph with their King

In worlds without a sea,¹³⁷¹³⁷And there was no more sea. Revelations xxi. 1. unchanging orbs of bliss.