Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Ocean
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste.
Bryant.—Thanatopsis.
The sea drowns out humanity and time; it has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song for ever and ever.
Holmes.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Chap. XI.
The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet—its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened.
Holmes.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Chap. XI.
The ocean stretches like a floor,—
A level floor of amethyst,
Crowned by a golden dome of mist.
Longfellow.—Becalmed.
“No more—no more—no more—”
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore).
Edgar Allan Poe.—To one in Paradise, St. 3.
A home on the rolling sea!
A life on the ocean wave!
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Epes Sargent.—Life on the Ocean Wave.
See living vales by living waters blessed,
Their wealth see earth’s dark cavern yield,
See ocean roll in glory dressed,
For all a treasure, and round all a shield.
Charles Sprague.—Ocean.
Thou wert before the continents, before
The hollow heavens, which like another sea
Encircles them, and thee; but whence thou wert,
And whence thou wast created, is not known.
Antiquity was young when thou wast old.
There is no limit to thy strength, no end
To thy magnificence. Thou goest forth
On thy long journeys to remotest lands,
And comest back unwearied.
Stoddard.—Hymn to the Sea.
Rocked in the cradle of the deep
I lay me down in peace to sleep;
Secure I rest upon the wave,
For thou, O Lord! has power to save.
Emma C. Willard.—Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.