Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/68

60 into a boat without a boatman and with a large hole in the bottom, not to sit upon a rock until the tide surrounds and flows over us, not to climb to the highest pinnacle of the cliff with the express intention of toppling over it to the rocks below, we take our departure, and speed the morning hours well enough.

Oh! the sea is a rare playfellow, for, unlike many a human one, he never wearies you! Each day he wears some new aspect, compels from us fresh wonder, admiration, and fear. He is terrible in his angry splendour of wind-tossed, thundering breakers, when his surface is all deep-green valleys and towering, snowy-crested mountain tops. He is soft, tender, caressing as a summer breeze, with his shoaling, rippling murmur and lazy, creeping wavelets. Sometimes he is sulky, not angry, that is when the sun has hidden his face; then he catches the reflection of the sky and is sad-coloured and dull. Another day he will lie calm as a lake, like a great monster soundly asleep, and we do not love his monotonous peace: dearer far is he to us when he stirs and flashes and quivers in the sun, his kingly breast sown with millions upon millions of sparkling diamonds. He gives no sign of the dark secrets he hides away so deep, so deep; of the water-slain bodies that lie below with the swish! swish! of his green waters, swirling over their pale, drowned faces, of the souls that trusted themselves to his smiling mien and silvern whispers, and whom he has drawn down, down! to the sea-chambers, of whose treasures we can but dimly guess from the rainbow-tinted shells and bloomy seaweed that are now and again washed up to us from their depths.

Hath not the sea its cities and towns and gardens and dwelling-houses? Do not flowers as lovely, as glowing, as fragrant grow in those silent gardens as any the dry land affords? They must have rare jewels down there; pearls such as no mortal empress ever wore; precious stones, common as pebbles on the shore;