THE BEACH. 
63 
“Evei drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main.” 
But he was not thinking of this shore, when he add¬ 
ed:— 
Till, in sheltered coves and reaches 
Of sandy beaches. 
All have found repose again.” 
These weeds were the symbols of those grotesque and 
fabulous thoughts which have not yet got into the shel¬ 
tered coves of literature. 
“ Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart,” 
And not yet “in books recorded 
They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depart.” 
The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea-jellies, 
which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one of the lowest 
forms of animal life, some white, some wine-colored, and 
a foot in diameter. I at first thought that they were 
a tender part of some marine monster, which the storm 
or some other foe had mangled. What right has the 
sea to bear in its bosom such tender things as sea-jellies 
and mosses, when it has such a boisterous shore, that 
the stoutest fabrics are wrecked against it? Strange 
that it should undertake to dandle such delicate children 
in its arm. I did not at first recognize these for the 
same which I had formerly seen in myriads in Boston 
Harbor, rising, with a waving motion, to the surface, 
as if to meet the sun, and discoloring the waters far and 
wide, so that I seemed to be sailing through a mere sun- 
fish soup. They say that when you endeavor to take 
one up, it will spill out the other side of your hand like 
