

at their feet, or along their precipitous 

 ledges; but the sea makes no concessions 

 to our human weakness, and leaves the 

 message which it intones with the voice 

 of tempest and the roar of surge without 

 an interpreter. Men have come to it in 

 all ages, full of a passionate desire to catch 

 its meaning and enter into its secret, but 

 the thought of the boldest of them has 

 only skirted its shores, and the vast sweep 

 of untamed waters remains as on the first 

 day. Homer has given us the song 

 of the landlocked sea, but where has 

 the ocean found a human voice that is 

 not lost and forgotten when it speaks to 

 us in its own penetrating tones? The 

 mountains stand revealed in more than 

 one interpretation, touched by their own 

 sublimity, but the sea remains silent in 

 human speech, because no voice will 

 ever be strong enough to match its awful 

 monody. 



It is because the sea preserves its secret 

 that it sways our imagination so royally, 

 and holds us by an influence which never 

 71 



