Where is your ancient courage? You were used to say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating.
The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it... ''Beware of me,'' it says, ''but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.
Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives.
Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them... But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard.
GLOUCESTER: Yet so much is my poverty of spirit, So mighty and so many my defects, As I had rather hide me from my greatness, Being a bark to brook no mighty sea, Than in my greatness covet to be hid, And in the vapour of my glory smother'd. But God be thanked. . . .
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices and the weak spirit quickens to rebel for the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover.