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O JOY! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed.

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledg'd hope still fluttering in his breast:
Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised!

But for those first affections

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us-cherish-and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal Sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

WORDSWORTH.

OCEAN exhibits, fathomless and broad,

Much of the power and majesty of God.

He swathes about the swelling of the deep,

That shines and rests, as infants smile and sleep. Vast as it is, it answers as it flows

The breathings of the lightest air that blows;

Curling and whit'ning over all the waste,

The rising waves obey th' increasing blast,

Abrupt and horrid as the tempest roars,
Thunder and flash upon the steadfast shores,
Till He, that rides the whirlwind, checks the rein,
Then all the world of waters sleeps again.

Cowper,