Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O UNION, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,--are all with thee! SEAWEED When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with seaweed from the rocks: From Bermuda's reefs; from edges Of sunken ledges, In some far-off, bright Azore; From Bahama, and the dashing, Silver-flashing Surges of San Salvador; From the tumbling surf, that buries The Orkneyan skerries, Answering the hoarse Hebrides; And from wrecks of ships, and drifting Spars, uplifting On the desolate, rainy seas;-- Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless main; Till in sheltered coves, and reaches Of sandy beaches, All have found repose again. So when storms of wild emotion Strike the ocean Of the poet's soul, erelong From each cave and rocky fastness, In its vastness, Floats some fragment of a song: Front the far-off isles enchanted, Heaven has planted With the golden fruit of Truth; From the flashing surf, whose vision Gleams Elysian In the tropic clime of Youth; From the strong Will, and the Endeavor That forever Wrestle with the tides of Fate From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, Tempest-shattered, Floating waste and desolate;-- Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless heart; Till at length in books recorded, They, like hoarded Household words, no more depart. CHRYSAOR Just above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer Into the ocean faint and far Falls the trail of its golden splendor, And the gleam of that single star Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender. Chrysaor, rising out of the sea, Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe, Forever tender, soft, and tremulous. Thus o'er the ocean faint and far Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly; Is it a God, or is it a star That, entranced, I gaze on nightly! THE SECRET OF THE SEA Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, All my dreams, come back to me.