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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Sea in Calm

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Oceanica: Vol. XXXI. 1876–79.

Miscellaneous: The Ocean

The Sea in Calm

By Bryan Waller Procter (1787–1874)

LOOK what immortal floods the sunset pours

Upon us! Mark! how still (as though in dreams

Bound) the once wild and terrible ocean seems!

How silent are the winds! No billow roars:

But all is tranquil as Elysian shores!

The silver margin which aye runneth round

The moon-enchanted sea, hath here no sound;

Even Echo speaks not on these radiant moors!

What! is the giant of the ocean dead,

Whose strength was all unmatched beneath the sun?

No; he reposes! Now his toils are done,

More quiet than the babbling brooks is he.

So mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed,

And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!