“Mourn on, mourn on, O solitary sea I love to hear thy moan, The world’s mixed cries attuned to melody In thy undying tone. Lo, on the yielding sand I lie alone, And the white cliffs around me draw their screen, And part me from the world. Let me disown For one short hour its pleasure and its spleen, And wrapt in dreamy thought, some peaceful moments glean.” The tide is coming in; the waves are big enough to be called waves, yet they break upon the shelving shore from a perfectly calm sea. And the long ranks rise and fall at my feet, curving and breaking in endless succession; line after line sent forth by the stern mandate of General Ocean, to die each in his turn upon the impregnable rampart of the Land. Ever since the third day of Creation has this assault been protracted, now by craft, now with the thunder of artillery and the violence of the storm; although it be really so hopeless that the balance of things remains about as it was at the beginning. If the armies of the Sea have made a breach here, fresh earthworks have been thrown up in another place by its stubborn antagonist, and the interminable strife remains equal still. But the solemn Sea forbids longer trifling; and its oppressive vastness, and melancholy murmur, and mysterious whisper of ever born and ever dying waves, own, surely, some grave meaning. “The earnest sea, Which strives to gain an utterance on the shore, But ne’er can shape unto the listening hills The lore it gathered in its awful age--” it seems to demand an interpreter. Let it be my mood to disentangle some of its utterances. Let me employ this hour of thought upon the lonely shore, in guessing at the meaning of the voice of the long lines which ever bow to the ground before me with eastern salaam, and then retire, having delivered their message. “The sea approaches, with its weary heart Mourning unquietly; An earnest grief, too tranquil to depart, Speaks in that troubled sigh; Yet the glad waves sweep onward merrily, For hope from them conceals the warning tone, Gaily they rush toward the shore--to die. All their bright spray upon the bare sand thrown, How soon they learn their part in that old ceaseless moan!”