_THE SEA_

    The sea, the sea, the open sea,     The blue, the fresh, the fever free;     Without a mark, without a bound,     It runneth the earth's wide regions round;     It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,     Or like a cradled creature lies.     I'm on the sea, I'm on the sea,     I am where I would ever be,     With the blue above and the blue below,     And silence wheresoe'er I go.     If a storm should come and awake the deep,     What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

    I love, oh! how I love to ride     On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,     Where every mad wave drowns the moon,     And whistles aloft its tempest tune,     And tells how goeth the world below,     And why the southwest wind doth 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 her 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;     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 have lived, since then, in calm and strife,     Full fifty summers a rover's life,     With wealth to spend, and a power to range,     But never have sought or sighed for change:     And death, whenever he comes to me,     Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!

--BARRY CORNWALL.

    The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the     wide world's joy. The lonely pine upon the mountain-top waves     its sombre boughs, and cries, "Thou art my sun." And the little     meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its     perfumed breath, "Thou art my sun." And the grain in a thousand     fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, "Thou art my sun."     And so God sits effulgent in Heaven, not for a favored few, but     for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so     low that he may not look up with child-like confidence and say,     "My Father! Thou art mine."

    --HENRY WARD BEECHER.

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