THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 147 
a moment; and a solemn beauty and meaning has 
invested the old Greek fable of Glaucus-the fisher- 
man: how, eating of the herb which gave his fish 
strencth to leap back into their native element, he 
was seized on the spot with a strange longing to 
follow them under the waves, and became for ever a 
companion of the fair semi-human forms with which 
the Hellenic poets peopled their sunny bays and 
firths, feeding “silent flocks” far below on the 
oreen Zostera beds, or basking with them on the 
sunny ledges in the summer noon, or wandering in 
the still bays on sultry nights amid the choir of 
Amphitrite and her sea-nymphs :— 
‘* Joining the bliss of the gods, as they waken the coves with their 
laughter,” 
in nightly revels, whereof one has sung,— 
‘«So they came up in their joy ; and before them the roll of the 
surges 
Sank, as the breezes sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked 
marble 
Awed ; and the crags of the cliffs, and the pines of the mountains, 
were silent. 
So they came up in their joy, and around them the lamps of the 
sea-nymphs, 
Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows, 
Loz 
