Ocean Quotes - page 28
Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa - rich beyond the dream of poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail!
Charles Darwin
Oh, rolling round the ocean,
From a far and foreign land,
May suit the common notion
That a sailor's life is grand.
But as for me, I'd sooner be
A roaring here at home
About the rolling, roaring life
Of them that sails the foam.
For the homeward-bounder's chorus,
Which he roars across the foam,
Is all about chucking a sailor's life,
And settling down at home.
Home, home, home,
That's the song of them that roam,
The song of the roaring, rolling sea
Is all about rolling home.
Norman Lindsay
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath!
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke!
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine!
And thou art terrible!-the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know or dream or fear
Of agony are thine. But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Fitz-Greene Halleck