A SALT BREEZE. 173 



rustle of sheaves, and the screening of grain. Then 

 again there is mimic thunder as the waves burst, 

 followed by a sound like the down-pouring of torrents 

 of rain. How it shovels the sand and sifts and washes 

 it forever ! Every particle of silt goes seaward ; it 

 is the earth-pollen with which the sunken floors of 

 the sea are deeply covered. What material for future 

 continents, new worlds, and new peoples, is hoarded 

 within its sunless depths ! How Darwin longed to 

 read the sealed book of the earth's history, that lies 

 -buried beneath the sea ! He thought it probable that 

 the first continents were there ; that the areas of ele- 

 vation and of subsidence had changed places in the 

 remote past. 



Turning over the collections of sea-poetry in the li- 

 braries, it is rare enough to find a line or a stanza with 

 the real savor of the shore in it. 'T is mostly fresh- 

 water poetry, very pretty, often spirited and frothy, but 

 seldom gritty, saline, and elemental. That bearded, 

 bristling savage quality of the sea, to which I have 

 referred, you shall hardly find hinted at, except, 

 perhaps, in Whitman, who is usually ignored in these 

 anthologies. Tennyson's touches, as here and there 

 in " Sea-dreams," always satisfy, and one chafes that 

 Shakespeare should have left so little on the subject. 



The poets makes a dead set at the vastness, power, 

 and terror of the sea, and take their fill of these as- 

 pects of it. 'T is an easy theme, and soon wearies. 

 We crave the verse that shall give us the taste of the 

 salt spray upon our lips. Bryant's hymn to the sea 



