Dutch Boats in a Gale J. M. W. Turner 1801 |
I
grew up where the tang in the air at dawn was sagebrush, not salt water,
where the vast rolling expanse was
the high prairie sloping away from the Big
Horns toward the Powder River,
and where most of the year you can wade across almost any water without getting
your belt wet. I have never lived by the
shore or, except for a childhood
Sunday excursion to Catalina Island,
ever been on the ocean.
Despite
my landlubber status, it is easy to
see the lure of the sea, its lore, its call to mysterious adventure. So many poets have felt that call.
Sometimes
called an elegy to himself, this
famous poem my Mathew Arnold could
have also made the cut for the death
poems entry the other day. In fact
the sea and death often seem inseparable especially in the days when many who
sailed never returned to port.
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
—Mathew
Arnold
Walt Whitman, of course,
caught the hurly-burly of the ships of the world crowding the harbor of old New York, is thrilled by the wide world
they represent—and by the sailor boys come ashore. But he dare not forget the many never come to
harbor again.
Song for All
Seas, All Ships
1
To-day a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal;
Of unnamed heroes in the ships—Of waves spreading and spreading, far as the eye can reach;
Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing;
And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge.
Of Sea-Captains young or old, and the Mates—and of all intrepid Sailors;
Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise, nor death dismay,
Pick’d sparingly, without noise, by thee, old Ocean—chosen by thee,
Thou Sea, that pickest and cullest the race, in Time, and unitest Nations!
Suckled by thee, old husky Nurse—embodying thee!
Indomitable, untamed as thee.
(Ever the heroes, on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,
Ever the stock preserv’d, and never lost, though rare—enough for seed preserv’d.)
2
Flaunt out O Sea, your separate flags of nations!
Flaunt out, visible as ever, the various ship-signals!
But do you reserve especially for yourself, and for the soul of man, one flag above all the rest,
A spiritual woven Signal, for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,
Token of all brave captains, and all intrepid sailors and mates,
And all that went down doing their duty;
Reminiscent of them ‘twined from all intrepid captains, young or old;
A pennant universal, subtly waving, all time, o’er all brave sailors,
All seas, all ships,
To-day a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal;
Of unnamed heroes in the ships—Of waves spreading and spreading, far as the eye can reach;
Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing;
And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge.
Of Sea-Captains young or old, and the Mates—and of all intrepid Sailors;
Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise, nor death dismay,
Pick’d sparingly, without noise, by thee, old Ocean—chosen by thee,
Thou Sea, that pickest and cullest the race, in Time, and unitest Nations!
Suckled by thee, old husky Nurse—embodying thee!
Indomitable, untamed as thee.
(Ever the heroes, on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,
Ever the stock preserv’d, and never lost, though rare—enough for seed preserv’d.)
2
Flaunt out O Sea, your separate flags of nations!
Flaunt out, visible as ever, the various ship-signals!
But do you reserve especially for yourself, and for the soul of man, one flag above all the rest,
A spiritual woven Signal, for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,
Token of all brave captains, and all intrepid sailors and mates,
And all that went down doing their duty;
Reminiscent of them ‘twined from all intrepid captains, young or old;
A pennant universal, subtly waving, all time, o’er all brave sailors,
All seas, all ships,
—Walt
Whitman
Stephen Crane was a youthful phenom as writer. One of his seminal experiences was being
shipwrecked and cast a-sea in an open boat in storm tossed waters. Although he was quickly rescued, it led to
his classic story of survival The Open
Boat and poetry like this.
The
ocean said to me once
The ocean said to me once,
“Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this—
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
“Tell her this
And more—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys.”
“Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this—
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
“Tell her this
And more—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys.”
—Stephen
Crane
Carl Sandburg was no sailor. After he relocated from the Midwest to North Carolina, he learned to the shore and tide pools. His ocean is
unconcerned with commerce, or even human experience. It is its own true thing.
From the Shore
A lone gray
bird,
Dim-dipping,
far-flying,
Alone in the
shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the
sea
And the stars
and storms.
Out over the
darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the
gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the
wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit
of a great black world,
Where fogs are
at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and
rapture of flight,
Glories of
chance and hazards of death
On its eager and
palpitant wings.
Out into the
deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long
borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering
waves are lost and gone
On the tides
that plunge and rear and crumble
—Carl
Sandburg
Lillian Moore, best known as
a brilliant children’s and young adult writer, editor, and publisher, also
walked the beaches.
Beach Stones
When these small
stones
were
in
clear pools and
nets of weed
tide-tumbled
teased by spray
they glowed
moonsilver,
glinted
sunsparks on
their speckled
skins.
Spilled on the
shelf
they were
wet-sand jewels
wave-green
still flecked
with
foam.
Now
gray stones
lie
dry and dim.
Why did we bring
them home?
—Lillian
Moore
Everett Hoagland
was
of late the Poet Lauriat of New Bedford,
Massachusetts, that old home port to whalers,
clipper ships, and fishermen. The sea has always called to him and recently
he compiled and edited Ocean Voices: An Anthology of Ocean Poems.
At East/West
Beaches
The day night
was born
we searched for
time and sea-
smoothed
fragments of blue, green,
brown bottles.
Glass
cleared of gloss
made of man-
and woman-
made fire
and sand
made from
stone, made
from rock, made
from cosmic
dust. We
fringed the lips
of under-
tow with
footprints the waves
redeemed from
the firm, wet
shore. We
gathered and gave each other
milk white
moonstones, aeons
old obsidian,
pebbles trans-
lucent as sucked
rock
candy and rolled
up our jeans in the raw
salty mist. The
sun sank into
a violet-lipped
quahog, and grit-edged
night opened
like a mussel. Under
lacquered,
pearly black
light of
moonrise we crossed
over a sandbar
into camp
ground
by duned scrub
beach rose. The
night day
was born we
turned
around and found
no footprints.
—Everett
Hoagland
We
will close with Mary Oliver, another
lover of beaches.
Ocean, a poem
I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is
always
grief more than enough,
a heart load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.
a heart load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.
—Mary Oliver
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