290 THE SEA. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



WHAT POETS HAVE SUNG OF THE SEA, THE SAILOR, AND THE SHIP. 



The Poet of the Sea still Wanting Biblical Allusions The Classical Writers Want of True Sympathy with the Subject. 

 Virgil's "^Kneid" His Stage Storms The Immortal Bard His Intimate Acquaintance with the Sea and the Sailor 

 The Golden Days of Maritime Enterprise The Tempest Miranda's Compassion Pranks of the "Airy Spirit" The 

 Merchant of Venice Piracy in Shakespeare's Days A Birth at Sea.Cymbelinc: the Queen's Description of our Isle- 

 Byron's " Ocean "Falconer's " Shipwreck "His Technical Knowledge The "True Ring" The Dibdins " Tom 

 Bowling" "The Boatmen of the Downs" Three Touching Poems Mrs. Hemans, Longfellow, and Kingsley 

 Browning's "Herve Kiel "The True Breton Pilot A New Departure Hood's "Demon Ship "Popular Songs of the 

 Day Conclusion. 



" I love the sea ; she is my fellow-creature, 



My careful purveyor she provides me store ; 

 She walls me round, she makes my diet greater, 

 She wafts me treasures from a foreign shore." * 



THE sea, the sailor, and the ship, have been fertile subjects for the poets, although countries 

 and lands, and those who dwell therein, have occupied by far the larger part of their 

 attention. Sooth to say, however, there has not yet arisen a single great writer whose 

 name could fairly be identified with the ocean as its own particular poet. There may be 

 reasons for this. The poet is usually of delicate organisation, and is more likely to be 

 found studying Nature on the quiet shore than on the turbulent ocean. Maybe he is. 

 practically a recluse, accessible to a few only ; and if of social nature, and not averse to 

 companionship amid the busy haunts of men, he yet shrinks from the roughness usual to, 

 though not inseparable from, the men of the sea. The modern facilities of travel, enabling- 

 the student to con Nature with comparative ease, may some day aid in producing a repre- 

 sentative poet of the sea. At present the position is vacant. 



In days of old, however, the poet prophets, David the sweet singer of Israel, and one- 

 or two writers in the New Testament, gave glimpses of the ocean which indicated an 

 acquaintance with the subject. Nothing can well be finer than the Psalmist's conception 

 of the mariner's life and its dangers in the lines commencing : 



" They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters ; 



" These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." 



The prophet Jeremiah draws a beautiful though pathetic picture of the ocean's unrest 

 when he says : " There is sorrow on the sea, it cannot be quiet ; :> and the serious poets 

 have followed his outlines. Milton describes one 



" In a troubled sea of passion tossed." 



Michelet defines its "many voices/' its murmur and its menace, its thunder and its roar, 

 its wail, its sigh, its " sublime duets with the rocks." 



The classical writers of antiquity had little sympathy with the sea, We have seen 



* Francis Quarles. 



