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Ranolf and Amohia

II

II.

But what preceptor like the mighty Ocean
To kindle thought and manifold emotion?
Majestic in its every form,
Stupendous calm or terror of the storm;
For ever to the dullest sense
A symbol of Omnipotence;
Yet like that Oriental notion.
That Deity of old devotion,
Omnipotence so lightly roused to ire,
And fickle as a flame of fire.

And with this fierce Sublimity, despite
The terrors of its treacherous might,
Its ruthless rage or sleek perfidious play,
As 't were with some tremendous beast of prey
Half-tamed, the Sailor lives from day to day,
Lives cautiously familiar, hour by watchful hour
For ever in its presence—in its power

But what a hardy pride his bosom warms
The while he runs the gauntlet through the storms
Playing with such a foe in wary strife
A match whereof the forfeit is his life,
page 23 The gain, more than his own, another's pelf;
With such apparent odds against himself,
The seeming desperation of the game
Hardens the coarser soul it cannot tame
Into a blind oblivion of the morrow,
A stoic mirth that laughs at vice and sorrow;
While he of nobler mind and loftier aim
Is nursed by consciousness of danger, still
Escaped by foresight or subdued by skill,
Into a calm unboastful strength of will,
A sober self-reliance, firm and grave;
And feels as o'er vast Ocean's baffled wave
Triumphantly he steers from clime to clime
Elate with something of its own sublime.

And many a vacant hour, on many a theme,
Our thoughtful Sea-boy found to muse or dream;
Those vigils which the sailor needs must keep
In the sky-girt seclusion of the Deep;
Oft when the playful billows, lightly curled,
Run past the ship, and quiet seems, as sleep,
The lone retreat that roams about the world—
That white-winged monastery moving still
Of rugged celibates against their will;
Or when in darkness, towards her goal unseen,
On moonless midnights mournfully serene,
She seems, as by some instinct, self-inspired,
Still pressing on her eager quest untired;
While, the obscurely-branching clouds between,
Crossed stays and braces—silent rocking spars
Seem mingling dimly with the dancing stars;
Or when, if steady-breathing trade-winds blow,
No shift of sails for days required, the crew
page 24 About the deck their quiet tasks pursue;
The dragging sail with rudely-skilful hands
They patch, or splice the rope's stiff-plaited strands,
Or twirl with balanced backward steps and slow
The whizzing yarn, still pondering as they go
The long-drawn tale it types of blended joy and woe:
Or when, her topsails squared, with plunging ease,
The ship goes reeling right before the breeze;
And he who has the watch, relaxing now,
May lean and mark, with thoughts far elsewhere, how
The bowsprit weaves great circles on the sky—
Down sinks the deck with all its life—up fly
The wide horizon and dark Ocean's plain;
And then the buoyant deck ascends again:
While speeding after, ever and anon,
A huge blue watery hill comes roaring on,
Tiger-like, open-mouthed, in furious chase;
But near the flying stern with slackened pace,
Ami lowered crest, seems first disposed to see
What the strange winged Leviathan may be
That dares amid these boisterous brawlers stray;
And, fearful the encounter to essay,
Falls back in a broad burst of foam, and hissing slinks away.
No lack of change each feeling to employ!
How his eyes widened with a solemn joy
When on some witching night
The jutting corner of the gibbous Moon—
A golden buoy
That weltered in a sable sea of cloud
(One level mass extending wide,
The firmament all bare beside)—
Shed an obscure and ominous light,
page 25 And fitful gusts scarce dared to moan aloud:
How was the heart-leap of his exultation
Sustained—sublimed by thrilled imagination
When, if a storm came veiling all the noon,
Old Ocean, rising in gigantic play,
Marshalled his multitudinous array
Of waves tumultuous into ridges gray,
And sent them whirling on their headlong way,
Host after host of crested cavalry
Charging in lines illimitable, urged
By trumpet winds whose deafening bray
Drowned the sharp hiss of myriad-lancing spray,
Into the horrible white gloom profound
That gathered, thickened all around!
And when the dimness of the squall was gone,
Haply, to some far region bound,
The great whale went majestically by—
Plunging along his mighty course alone,
Into the watery waste unknown;
Cleaving with calm, deliberate speed,
The battling waves he would not heed;
While at long intervals up thrown
Successive jets of spouted brine,
Decreasing with the distance, in a line,
Told how he ne'er diverged
An instant from his haughty path
Into die black heart of the tempest's wrath,
That like dense smoke before him scowled,
For all the clamorous coil of winds that howled
And waves that leapt around him as he past
And flung his foamy banner to the blast