In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,... Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject... for Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting soun...d to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two thirds of the globe, but of... which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod.... But having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little salted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and man...y miles long, as if the surface were covered with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country pond.... Yet this same placid ocean, as civil now as a city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, will ere long be lashed into sudden fury, and all its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will play with them like seaweed, distend them like dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. This gentle ocean will toss and tear the rag of a man's body like the father of mad bulls, and his relatives may be seen seeking the remnants for weeks along the strand. From some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weeping to the unheard-of shore, and now stand uncertain where a sailor has recently been buried amid the sand-hills.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be,... Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are certain things--as, a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three--... That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sea--this truth must be confessed--has no generosity. No display of manly qualities--courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulne...ss--has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »