English

9. Sea-Sickness.
The afternoon clouds, all darkly,
Sink deeper over the Sea:
And the Sea rises darkly against them;
While the ship races through in their midst.
Seasick, there I sat by the mast all alone,
And many reflections I made on myself,
Primitive, ash-grey reflections —
Resembling in this Father Lot's,
Who, after enjoyment of too much good cheer,
Found himself truly in evil case.
Meanwhile I muse upon far-away legends:
How pilgrim Crusaders of old time,

8. The Phaenix.
There comes on wide wings a bird from the Westward.
He flies to Eastward,
To his garden home in the Orient,
Where grow the spices, perfumed, luxuriant,
And palm trees rustle and springs shed freshness,
And flying, the wonder-bird is singing:
" She loves him! She loves him! "
She bears in her little heart his image,
She bears the sweet and deep-hidden secret,
And herself knows not!
But in her dream before her he stands,
She kisses his hands with beseeching and weeping,

7. Questionings.
At night by the sea, the wide-stretching sea,
Stands a youthful man,
His brain is all doubt, his heart all sorrow,
With sad lips, the waves he gloomily questions:
" The riddle of life, oh, solve me,
Tormenting primeval riddle,
Which so many heads have pondered:
Heads in hieroglyphical caps,
Heads both in turbans and black birettas,

6. The Gods of Greece.
O full-blooming Moon! how in thy light
Like a flood of molten gold the sea sparkles!
The clearness of day, touched with twilight enchanted,
Broods over the far-spread plain of the sea-sands.
On the clear-blue, starless heavens
Hover the snow-white clouds,
Like to colossal statues of Gods,
Of white, gleaming marble.

No — nevermore — no clouds are there yonder!
'Tis themselves I behold, the great Gods of Hellas,
Who once held sway o'er the world, rejoicing,

5. The Song of the Oceanides.
As evening falls it dimmer grows at sea,
And alone, with his own lonely spirit,
There sits a man upon the naked sea-shore,
And gazes, with death-cold look, aloft
To the wide and death-cold vault of heaven;
And gazes abroad on the wide-rolling sea.
Sailing through air his sighs go forth,
And return again disconsolate:
For they found that the heart was tight-barred
In which they had hoped to anchor.
And he groaned so loud, that the white seamews

4. Sunset.
Beautiful, peaceful,
The Sun has now dipped again to the sea.
Already the heaving waters are tinged
With the deepening night;
Only the evening crimson
Still scatters sparks as of golden tapers,
And the mighty force of the tide,
Drives to shore all the snowy surf-waves
Which hurry on, hasty and gleeful,
Like flocks of woolly lambkins
Which, as the night falls, whistling, the shepherd
Drives to their fold.

" How lovely the sun is! "

3. Wrecked.
Hope, hope and love, all shattered for ever!
And I lie, like a corpse I lie here,
Cast out by the sea in its wrath.
On the shore I am lying —
The barren, naked shore.
Before me tumbles the waste of waters;
Behind me lie only misery and sorrow.
And high overhead the clouds are floating,
Grey, shapeless daughters of air,
Who draw up the water in buckets of mist
From the ocean,
And toilsomely drag it and drag it,
And again pour it forth to the sea —

2. Storm.
Heavily lies on the ocean the tempest,
And through the sombre rampart of clouds
Darts the forked lightning flash,
Sudden illuming, vanishing sudden,
Like a shaft from the brain of Kronion.
Over the heaving, desolate waters
Booms the thunder afar,
And the white glancing manes of the coursers leap up
Which the North-wind begot
On the ravishing mares of Erichthon.
The flocks of wild sea-birds flutter in terror
Like shades of the dead at the Styx,

1. Hail to the Sea!

T HALATTA ! Thalatta!
Oh, let me hail thee, eternal sea!
Oh, let me hail thee ten thousand times
From spirit exulting,
As once thou wast hailed by
Ten thousand hearts of Hellas
Struggling with misery, yearning for home delights,
World-renowned hearts of Hellas.
The billows were heaving,
Were heaving and roaring;
And freely the sun poured upon them
Its radiance of rose and of opal;
Startled, the flocks of sea swallows
Fluttered afar, loud-screaming;

12. Peace.
High in Heaven the sun was standing,
The white clouds billowy around him.
The sea was calm,
And musing I lay at the stern of our vessel,
Musing and dreaming, and half in waking
And half in sleep, I gazed on Christus,
Redeemer of Man!
In snowy flowing garments,
Giant-like strode he afar
Over land and sea.
His head reached up to the welkin;
His hands were stretched in blessing,
And as his heart did he bear
The sun itself in his bosom,
The sun ablaze and encrimsoned,