Tiefer Stille herrscht im Wasser, Ohno Regung ruht das Meer, Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer Glatte Flache rings umher. Keine Luft von keiner Seite! Todesstille fürchterlich! In der ungeheuern Weite Reget keine Welle sich. Thus does Goethe, in this little poem of two verses, with a masterly ease that carries conviction, suggest to us the subtle power of a calm at sea. The mountain tarn, alone with the sky, has a charm that is all its own. The shining levels of the lake, in the lower hollows of the hills; the quiet reaches of a river where the stream seems to pause and gather strength for its onward course; even the still pool that hides in the meadows among the alders and willows: each of these has its own peculiar charm--a charm which is hard to analyse but almost universal in its range of appeal. But potent above them all is this Meeresstille, this calm at sea--when, as Bowring finely translates Goethe's second verse: "Not a zephyr is in motion! Silence fearful as the grave! In the mighty waste of ocean Sunk to rest is every wave." Turner, in his "Liber Studiorum," attempted to depict a calm at sea. The picture is not one of his most successful efforts: but so great an artist could not fail to seize on the essential features of his subject. The sun is heralding his advent by flinging upward athwart the mists and cloudlets a stream of diffused light which fills the scene with a soft pervading glow. The surface of the water is glassy, not much more substantial than the haze which floats above it. But deep as is the calm, old ocean cannot quite forget his innate restlessness; he gently urges onward a succession of slow risings and fallings, with broad ripples to mark their boundaries, and to tell of spent billows and far-heaving tides. The movement of the waters is, as it were, subconsciously felt rather than perceived; or, if perceived, it is lost in the pervading sense of placid spaciousness. The boats and their occupants, so far from disturbing the sense of calm, are made to enhance it. And the unruffled surface of the water is rendered palpably impalpable by the magic of reflections. Morris has given us a word-picture of similar import. "Oh, look! the sea is fallen asleep, The sail hangs idle evermore; Yet refluent from the outer deep The low wave sobs upon the shore. Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills Silent the broad weeds wave and sway; Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray Is born of surges vast as hills."