176 A SALT BREEZE. 



He uses the word " rustling " and the phrase " hoarse 

 and sibilant " to describe the sound of the waves. 

 " The husky-voiced sea " expresses the saline quality 

 to which I have referred : 



" Sea of stretch' d ground-swells, 



Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 



Sea of the brine of life, and of unshovelPd yet always ready 



graves, 



Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, 

 I am integral with }-ou; I too am of one phase and of all phases." 



" Oh, madly the sea pushes upon the land, 

 With love, with love." 



Or this, written upon the beach at Ocean Grove 

 in 1883, 



" With husky-haughty lips, O Sea ! 



Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, 



Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, 



The troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, 



Thy ample smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the 



sun, 



Thy brooding scowl and murk thy unloos'd hurricanes, 

 Thy unsubdtiedness, caprices, wilfulness; 

 Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears a lack from all 



eternity in thy content, 

 (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make 



thee greatest no less could make thee, ) 

 Thy lonely state something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet 



never gain'st, 

 Surely some right withheld some voice, in huge monotonous 



rage, of freedom-lover pent, 

 Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those 



breakers, 



By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, 

 And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, 

 And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, 



