Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,- Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 10 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods And millions in those solitudes, since first Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 20 When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom, yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train 25 Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes So live, that when thy summons comes to join Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch LXXXIV. THE USES OF THE OCEAN. SWAIN. [The following extract is a portion of a sermon of striking eloquence and beauty by the Rev. Leonard Swain, of Providence, Rhode Island, published in the "Bibliotheca Sacra."] THE traveller who would speak of his experience in foreign lands must begin with the sea. God has spread this vast pavement of his temple between the hemispheres, so that he who sails to foreign shores must pay a double 5 tribute to the Most High; for through this temple he has to carry his anticipations as he goes, and his memories when he returns. The sea speaks for God; and however may be to reach the strand that lies before him, and enter upon the career of business or pleasure 10 that awaits him, he must check his impatience during this 15 eager the tourist long interval of approach, and listen to the voice with which Jehovah speaks to him as, horizon after horizon, he moves to his purpose along the aisles of God's mighty tabernacle of the deep. It is a common thing, in speaking of the sea, to call it "a waste of waters." But this is a mistake. Instead of being an encumbrance or a superfluity, the sea is as essential to the life of the world, as the blood is to the life of the human body. Instead of being a waste and desert, it 20 keeps the earth itself from becoming a waste and a desert. It is the world's fountain of life and health and beauty; and if it were taken away, the grass would perish from the mountains, the forests would crumble on the hills, the harvests would become powder on the plains, the continent 5 would be one vast Sahara of frosts and fire, and the solid globe itself, scarred and blasted on every side, would swing in the heavens, silent and dead as on the first morning of creation. Water is as indispensable to all life, vegetable or animal, as the air itself. From the cedar on the mountains to the lichen that clings to the wall; from the elephant that pastures on the forests, to the animalcule that floats in the sunbeam; from the leviathan that heaves the sea 10 into billows, to the microscopic creatures that swarm, a million in a single foam-drop, all alike depend for their existence on this single element and must perish if it be withdrawn. This element of water is supplied entirely by the sca. 15 The sea is the great inexhaustible fountain which is con tinually pouring up into the sky precisely as many streams, and as large, as all the rivers of the world are pouring into it. The sea is the real birthplace of the clouds and the 20 rivers, and out of it come all the rains and dews of heaven. Instead of being a waste and an encumbrance, therefore, it is a vast fountain of fruitfulness, and the nurse and mother of all the living. Out of its mighty breast come the resources that feed and support the population of the world. 25 Omnipresent and everywhere alike is this need and blessing of the sea. It is felt as truly in the centre of the continent, - where, it may be, the rude inhabitant never heard of the ocean, as it is on the circumference of the 30 wave-beaten shore. We are surrounded, every moment, by the presence and bounty of the sea. It looks out upon us from every violet in our garden-bed; from every spire of grass that drops upon our passing fect the beaded dew of the morning; from the bending grain that fills the arm of the reaper; from bursting 35 presses, and from barns filled with plenty; from the broad foreheads of our cattle and the rosy faces of our children; from the cool dropping well at our door; from the brook that murmurs from its side, and from the elm and spreading maple that weave their protecting branches beneath the sun, and swing their breezy shadows over our habitation. 5 It is the sea that feeds us. It is the sea that clothes us. It cools us with the summer cloud, and warms us with the blazing fires of winter. We make wealth for ourselves and for our children out of its rolling waters, though we may live a thousand leagues away from its shore, and never 10 have looked on its crested beauty, or listened to its eternal anthem. Thus the sea, though it bears no harvest on its bosom, yet sustains all the harvests of the world. Though a desert itself, it makes all the other wildernesses of the earth to bud and blossom as the rose. Though its own 15 waters are as salt and wormwood, it makes the clouds of heaven to drop with sweetness, opens springs in the valleys and rivers among the hills, and fountains in all dry places, and gives drink to all the inhabitants of the earth. The sea is a perpetual source of health to the world. 20 Without it there could be no drainage for the lands. It is the scavenger of the world. Its agency is omnipresent. Its vigilance is omniscient. Where no sanitary committee could ever come, where no police could ever penetrate, its myriad eyes are searching, and its million hands are busy 25 exploring all the lurking-places of decay, bearing swiftly off the dangerous sediments of life, and laying them a thousand miles away in the slimy bottom of the deep. The sea is also set to purify the atmosphere. The winds, whose wings are heavy and whose breath is sick 30 with the malaria of the lands over which they have blown, are sent out to range over these mighty pastures of the deep, to plunge and play with its rolling billows, and dip their pinions over and over in its healing waters. There they rest when they are weary, cradled into sleep on that 35 vast swinging couch of the ocean. There they rouse themselves when they are refreshed, and lifting its waves upon their shoulders, they dash it into spray, and hurl it backwards and forwards through a thousand leagues of sky. Thus their whole substance is drenched, and bathed, and washed, and winnowed, and sifted through and through, by 5 this glorious baptism. Thus they fill their mighty lungs once more with the sweet breath of ocean, and, striking their wings for the shore, they go breathing health and vigor along all the fainting hosts that wait for them in mountain and forest and valley and plain, till the whole 10 drooping continent lifts up its rejoicing face, and mingles its laughter with the sea that has waked it from its fevered sleep, and poured its tides of returning life through all its shrivelled arteries. The ocean is not the idle creature that it seems, with 15 its vast and lazy length stretched between the continents, with its huge bulk sleeping along the shore, or tumbling in aimless fury from pole to pole. It is a mighty giant, who, leaving his oozy bed, comes up upon the land to spend his strength in the service of man. He there allows 20 his captors to chain him in prisons of stone and iron, to bind his shouders to the wheel, and set him to grind the food of the nations, and weave the garments of the world. The mighty shaft, which that wheel turns, runs out into all the lands; and geared and belted to that centre of power, 25 ten thousand times ten thousand clanking engines roll their cylinders, and ply their hammers, and drive their million shuttles. Thus the sea keeps all our mills and factories in mɔtion. Thus the sca spins our thread and weaves our cloth. 30 It is the sea that cuts our iron bars like wax, rolls them out into proper thinness, or piles them up in the solid shaft strong enough to be the pivot of a revolving planet. It is the sea that tunnels the mountain, and bores the mine, and lifts the coal from its sunless depths, and the 35 ore from its rocky bed. It is the sea that lays the iron track, that builds the iron horse, that fills his nostrils |