Across the water on the other side
A flat and spacious marge of breezy green
In place of the sheer heights, which now were seen
Receding masses ever shifting shape,
Behind us, as we sped from cape to cape
Along the snakelike windings of our way,
Athwart the shining levels, which alway
Broadened before us freshening toward the main,
And to and fro began to heave and swell;
While here and there a gleaming fishing smack
On billowy undulations rose and fell.
Anon a stiff breeze rattled in the shrouds,
The seagulls came and wheeled across our track,
The cliffs and woods behind us far away
Were rolled together like departing clouds,
And we plunged forth into the Severn Sea.
Full many a vaporous glory did we see
Alight a moment on some distant shore,
Like what illumes the features of a saint
Who in his sleep as through an open door
Doth catch a stilly glimpse of Paradise,
And to and fro athwart the Holy Floor
The Blessed Spirits walking there within,
Of holier aspects than all art could paint,
Or even Faith with her divining eyes,
Like living stars, all pure from sense and sin.
One wheeling seagull ever hung anear,
As loath to leave us and yet loath to stay:
Alway a fresh light breeze did fan the brow,
Making a murmurous music in the ear;
The sparkling salt sea-waters lightly brushed
The livelong day against the speeding prow;
And now and then some heavier billow rushed
Upon it, and fell off in flakes of foam,
Drenching the cordage with the springing spray.
A thousand flying shadows by us flew
Athwart the furrows of the toiling waste
Upon each other in untiring haste,
As though the import of their speed they knew,
Yet ever roaming never found a home.
Not those who traverse most the Ocean plain
Can find a tongue to utter what they feel
As its all tameless billows feast their eye:
Why speak I therefore, striving to reveal
Sensations multitudinous, which lie
Huddled together and bemoaning sore,
Like tongueless creatures, round the powerless mind,
Craving for utterance, and no utterance find,
Which living but to speak must speechless die ;
Which in this life will stir the heart no more,
Though others like to them may rise again,
But never quite the same as rose before.
And yet we trust they do not stir in vain,
Though voiceless is the hunger which expands
The reeling spirit, as the eye surveys
A waste of waters, girt with gleaming lands,
Rock up and down beneath the naked sky;
The live emotion of the heaving main
Vibrate with ageless yearning to give forth
Its adorations, and its sounding praise
Unceasing, to the Triune God on high,
Who once from East and West and South and North,
By the sole fiat of His Living Word,
Did call it forth from chaos into being;
Which utterance by no mortal ear was heard,
Which wondrous birth no mortal eye was seeing.
Anon we reached the coastline on the left,
And sailed along it in the afternoon,
Where towering ranges of long mountain tracts
In multitudinous heights came down, and couched
Their massive limbs beside the wandering waves.
We saw the black mouths of receding caves;
We saw above two gleaming cataracts
Leap from the heights, but never reach the sea;
And here and there, torn from the solid rock,
A tumbled boulder down below emerge
From yeasty eddies of the toiling surge,
Which in primæval ages thus was cleft
Asunder from the cliff and toppled down
(If it be true what science hath avouched
In pride of knowledge not born fifty years),
FROM BRISTOL TO LYNTON.
Ere yet were made these frames of hopes and fears,
The man and brute, but all beneath the moon
Was lifeless, and the earth a lifeless block.
We turned a headland, and a little cove,
The opening of a gorge, before us lay,
The haven where we would that we would be,
The beauteous close of our most beauteous way
Adown that broadening sunlit Severn Sea;
Into the mountain creek straightway we drove.
ST. JOHN'S COLL., Oxford.
stands for the "Anti-muffs" who up to Cambridge go.
B stands for famed old Barnwell, with morals quite so-so, C stands for that £15-'tis "Caution," I declare.
D stands for both "Duns" and "Dons," of whom I say
E stands for the Evil look the Proctors throw at one.
F stands for the Frolics rare when down has gone the sun.
G stands for the horrid "Grind," when near the "Exam."
H stands for the "Half-and-half" you get at Freshmen's
I stands for the "Interest" the Tutors get on bills.
J stands for the "Jovial Boy," who oft his pewter fills. K stands for the "Kitchen Mess," that's given you at
I stands for the Lectures that prepare you for "Smalls."
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