BRYAN PROCTER

I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more.

Pity speaks to grief More sweetly than a band of instruments.

Even Echo speaks not on these radiant moors.

There's not a wind but whispers of thy name; And not a flow'r that grows beneath the moon, But in its hues and fragrance tells a tale Of thee, my love.

Oh, the summer night, Has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.

So mightiest powers buy deepest calms are fed, And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!

O human beauty, what a dream art thou, that we should cast our life and hopes away on thee!

Half the ills we heard within our hearts are ills because we hoard them.

The sweetest noise on earth, a woman's tongue; A string which hath no discord.

All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim.

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream, Gently, - as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream!

Despair doth strike as deep a furrow in the brain as mischief or remorse.

Where are Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt will last three thousand years. I am content to believe that the mind of man survives, somehow or other, his clay.

The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies.

The sea! The sea! The open sea!, The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Women are so gentle, so affectionate, so true in sorrow, so untired and untiring! but the leaf withers not sooner, and tropic light fades not more abruptly.

I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be, With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoever I go.

How silent are the winds!

Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain.

A single star is rising in the east, and from afar sheds a most tremulous lustre; silent Night doth wear it like a jewel on her brow.