Why look’st thou so?’ – With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross. ibid.
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea. ibid.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean. ibid.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink. ibid.
The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out;
At one stride comes the dark. ibid.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony. ibid.
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I. ibid.
We were a ghastly crew. ibid.
The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities ... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry. Rachel Carson
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. James Joyce, Ulysses
The great fishpond. Thomas Dekker, 1570-1641
The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea. James Elroy Flecker, The Gates of Damascus
West of these out of seas colder than the Hebrides
I must go
Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young
Star captains glow. James Elroy Flecker, 1884-1915, The Dying Patriot
The waters were his winding sheet, the sea was made his tomb; Yet for his fame the ocean sea, was not sufficient room. Richard Barnfield 1574-1627, re death of Sir John Hawkins
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting and enslaving than a life at sea. Joseph Conrad
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and
tossing about in a streamer from Harwich –
Which is something between a large bathing
machine and a very small second class carriage. W S Gilbert, Iolanthe, 1882
I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking. John Masefield, Sea Fever, 1902
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song:
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream II i 149
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. William Shakespeare, Henry V III Prologue
From the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth
Did I redeem. A wreck past hope he was. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night V I 74-75, Antonio
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground ... But I would fain die a dry death. William Shakespeare, The Tempest I i @61, Gonzalo
Who hath desired the Sea? – the sight of salt water unbounded –
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing –
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing. Rudyard Kipling, The Sea and the Hills, 1903
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often ’tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody –
Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood,
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired! John Keats, On the Sea
I In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: ‘What does this vaingloriousness down here?"’...
VI Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI Till the Spinner of the Years
Said ‘Now!’ And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres. Thomas Hardy, Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the Loss of the Titanic)
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me. Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Break, Break, Break’, 1842
My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra. John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy. L A Meyer, ‘Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber’