Sea of Glass

“ On the sea side the broad galleries of each story are shut in by glass, which can be opened to admit or shut to exclude the fresh ocean breeze. Whatever the temperature outside, those great galleries are always agreeable for lounging or promenading. For me, I never tire of the sea and its changing color and movement. ”

“ With a good six-inch glass and a power of 200 when the air is pure and the opposition is favourable, there is no difficulty in making out the coast-lines, and the various tones of shade on the water surface may be observed, showing that here the sea is tranquil, and there it is driven by storms. ”

“ Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. ”

“ The sea is "of glass mingled with fire"; and if the eye cannot pierce its depths, it is not because of any darkening impurity in the crystal clearness, but simply because not even light can travel to the bottom. The higher up on the mountains men go, the deeper down can they see into that ocean. ”

“ I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery. ”

“ Under the iridescent play of color the sea has disappeared. Its liquid surface has merged with the luminous air, and the cruiser, rose-colored, moves through myriad rainbows.
Everything about the suspended ship is changed to silence and fantasy. The shadows of twilight succeed the colors that glow and disappear. Air and sun create marvels that are not of our world. The light falls on us like a blessing which penetrates our hearts and thoughts with an inexpressible ecstasy. ”

“ There is nothing to catch the light of the springing sun save the clouds. The vast solitude brims into the unbroken distance, and cold is the ashen sky and cold the picture of the ship, as it steals out of the darkness of the night. The melancholy, however, is but in the dawn’s beginning. When the sun rises, there is a splendor of colors at sea which you will not find ashore. The ocean is a mirror that reverberates the light of day. ”

“ Sometimes we think we can almost trace the airwaves, one behind the other, until the last thin layer is reached, and the glance is lured on as through a crystal, and we are soaring lark-like through the azure fields, the world beneath us lost, as when the swimmer in mid-ocean turns his face from the ship that represents land, and floats away on a blue sea under a blue sky, a solemn silence over all, the heart filled with the trembling delight and awesome majesty of boundless space. ”

“ In its serene moonlit moods the ocean possesses an incomparable and amazing magic of spiritualising. The veriest commonplace glows into poetic beauty under the mysterious, vitalising, enriching influence. I have seen a girl whom no exaggerated courtesy could have pronounced comely by daylight, show like an angel on the deck of a yacht on a hushed and radiant night when the air has been brimming to the stars with the soft haze of moonlight, and when the sea has resembled a carpet of black silk softly waving. The moon is a witch, and her pencils of light are charged with magic qualities. ”

“ In the mean time the sea, now wonderfully calm, expanding into infinite space, reproduced upon its shimmering surface, as in a mirror, this magic array of color permeated by the amber twilight. Gradually the curtain of night dropped over the scene, but there still lingered a long crimson line on the distant horizon where the sun had sunk into the sea. The most careless eye on board the ship watched the constantly changing effects with bated breath. Nature revels in beauty, and does her work with a lavish hand in the far East. ”

“ And there is the rich man, Sindbad the Sailor, and you may listen if you will to his stories of travel to marvelous lands. Thus you travel to the mysterious East, without effort. You take part in wonderful adventures, without danger. Your magic glass is the window through which a world of fairy magic gleams vividly. ”

“ Yet the sea-lover may justify his preference by appealing to the beauty of empurpled shadows, toned by amethyst or opal or shining with violet light, reflected from the clouds that cross and find in those dark shields a mirror. There are suggestions, too, of immensity, of liberty, of action, presented by the boundless horizons and the changeful changeless tracts of ocean which no plain possesses. ”

“ Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filled by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it, and motionless around a lofty column of bronze, which dominated this sea like the gigantic mast of a sunken vessel. ”

“ Corals and Coral Islands, by Dana.
Travellers in all ages have described the marvellous illuminations seen at night on the ocean surface; illuminations long a mystery to those who gazed with admiration. At times the whole sea is one blaze of light; and the ship cleaves her way through liquid silver, or crimson glory, through milky whiteness or flames of blue and red. ”

“ He had himself lashed to the main mast, and while he was tossed about in every direction, saturated with seawater, and excited by this hand-to-hand struggle with his model, he painted the tempest, not on his canvass, but in his memory, which never forgot anything. He saw and remembered all—clouds, waves, and rock, hues and colors, with the motion of the boats and the rocking of the ship, and the accidental light which intersected a slate-colored sky that served as a ground to the whiteness of the sea-foam. ”

“ Although we are yet but groping, as it were, in the rudiments of sea-science, a time is rapidly approaching when we may hope to have the wonders of the deep revealed to us, of which we are now ignorant, so that we may know much more accurately than we do now the conditions which regulate the vast stores of food-wealth that lie at our command when we choose to do business in the great deep. ”

“ BLUE THE earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide Slowly into another day; slowly the rover Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide. I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped. ”

“ I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea spread in a firm dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty roof of marble; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the depths. ”

“ The sun vanished and the pale grey of evening stole like a curtain drawn by spirit-hands out of the eastern sea and over the waning glories of the skies, with a star or two glittering in its skirts; and the wind from the north blew with a sudden weight and a long moaning, making the sea whence it came ashen with gushings of foam which ran into a colour of thin blood on passing the confines of the western reflection. ”

“ At times the lover of beauty, even of colour, can be fully satisfied, for the sun alone can throw over this emptiness a glory like that of the golden streets and jewelled gates of the prophet’s vision. The sea becomes one splendid turquoise, the coral rock more beautiful than gold, the mountains, mere heaps of dead rock though they are, savage and repellent, change to great tender masses of lovely colour, ruddy violets and pinks, luminous as though they had some source of light within themselves and shared in the joy they give to the solitary beholder ”

“ If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would have something more of color upon them than that opaque dead green. ”

“ Mid-ocean, midnight, the waves buzz drowsily;
In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence
Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,
And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed, insistent,
At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.
Old Tunes
As the waves of perfume, heliotrope, rose,
Float in the garden when no wind blows,
Come to us, go from us, whence no one knows;
So the old tunes float in my mind,
And go from me leaving no trace behind,
Like fragrance borne on the hush of the wind. ”

“ I rise through them to rarer air, and lo! my moon has fled up immeasurably, and shines remote, concentrated, placid.
'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea, within unhewn walls, are splendid courts, where marbles discover their shy translucence, and drink mellow life from widespread floors of sand, golden, perfect, unwrinkled and unstained from age to age; and drink milky fire that hangs where nebulous sea-stars cluster that [76] night may never prevail. Inmost wait vacant shrines to gratify worship of sleep and dreams—pure amber one, great crystals one, and rainbow spars. ”

“ The sky occupies much of his space, he makes searching studies of it, and his favourite effect is a flash of light shooting across a piled-up mass of clouds. The line of the horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one of the few masters of his day—perhaps the only one—who succeeds in representing a storm at sea. ”

“ The clouds drew back, and the sun—a perfect world of fire—sank in burning brilliancy into the deep blue sea, which did not appear to catch one tint from its vivid beams, but remained a deep, cold, clear blue, whilst every cloud around caught and returned the rays. In these latitudes, at sea, a sunset is indeed a glorious sight: and what, after the evening shades have fallen around, and the deck is quiet and nearly forsaken, can be more calm and refreshing than the star-light night, and the cool and delightful breeze?—luxurious hours of dreamy contemplation. ”

“ High above all, a golden sphere reflected the sun's rays far out across the distant sea by day, and at night a huge lamp took its place as a beacon for the sailors of the Mediterranean, even to Spain and Africa. ”

“ The waves, washing the solid rock, and wearing even the stone at its base, have no power to disturb the lamp, which, well trimmed, burns silently on, throwing its beams far out to sea, and fanning hope in the heart of the sailor, who finds at last the shore and blesses the beacon light. ”

“ Instinct with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and mingle among the pale stars, and rise up into the brightness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye gazes down into the deep waters of the sea for ever—that sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming with phosphor light, that emanates out of its sapphire serenity like bright dreams breathed into the spirit of a deep sleep. ”

“ She has the robustness, volume and vigor of the great high seas. She is deep-bosomed and broad of thigh and stands as though storms and monsters had no terrors, as one accustomed to breast and conquer the waves. Water creatures supplement her, but she seems made on too goddess-like a scale to disport herself with them. It is interesting to contrast this nymph of the fathomless trough of the sea with the arch and playful Water Sprites of the froth and ripple, on the columns within the Court of Ages. ”

“ But it was chiefly on the lagoon that the artists saw the richest and softest colour. In subdued sunlight, such as is frequent in the haze of the sea, the soft silvery, pearly grays vary infinitely over the smooth waters. In fresher and brighter days when the wind brings the flying clouds, the colour is that which is native to a sea-atmosphere, often clear, often thrilling through veils of ruby, sapphire, and emerald vapour, steeped always in the diffused light which is felt, like joy, over wide spaces of water, and under a vast expanse of sky. ”

“ I could not imagine what it could be, until, looking into the darkness on my right hand, I spied three lights upon the sea—one green, one red, and one white—this last much higher than the others. Soon after there was a heavy noise of washing water, and just over the white light there was a shower of sparks, and presently a great black shadow stood up on the sea and blotted out the stars behind it. ”

“ The days are a tepid dream. Since I arrived not a leaf has stirred, not a bird has sung, the tides ebb and flow in listless and soundless ripples. Far off, on the shallow sea, phantom ships hover and are gone, and on an indefinite horizon a blurred ocean blends with a blurred sky. ”

“ When night on the ocean sinks calmly down, I climb the vessel's prow, Where the foam-wreath glows with its phosphor light, Like a crown on a sea-nymph's brow. Above, through the lattice of rope and spar, The stars in their beauty burn; And the spirit longs to ride their beams, And back to the loved return. They say that the sunset is brighter far When it sinks behind the sea; That the stars shine out with a softer fire— Not thus they seem to me. ”