Unyamwezi

“ Then my loneliness overpowered me, and in the balminess of the springlike night, at the soft sound of the waves on the sand, under the delicate crescent shedding its rays over the sea, I felt in my heart such an intense desire of love, that I was near crying out in my envious distress.
Then, all at once, I became ashamed of this weakness, and, unwilling to admit to myself that I was a man like another, I accused the moonshine of disturbing my reason.
I have moreover always believed, that the moon exercises a mysterious influence on the human brain. ”

“ Ay, his captivating smiles are as beautiful as the sweet jessamine, as bright as the silvery flash of lightning in the blue sky, and as sweet as pleasant dreams in peaceful nights! And his love? Oh, it is as deep as the ocean itself—reposing in the calmness of its majesty, but overflowing at the slightest stir! Ah me, why my eyes were blind to all these so long—why did I not plunge into that ocean of love, and sleep in its placid bosom, quite forgetful of my own existence! ”

“ The sail was up, we had left the headland and the hills, and when they furled it and cast anchor we were swinging far out on the back of the great monster that was frolicking to itself and thinking no more of us than we do of a mote in the air. Elder Snow, he says that it’s singular we regard day as illumination and night as darkness,——day that really hems us in with narrow light and shuts us upon ourselves, night that sets us free and reveals to us all the secrets of the sky. ”

“ Death gave. His mighty hand set free
My wild sea-maid, that could not live
Without her waters' liberty.
And I?—To me the fields are dear;
The steadfast earth is home to me.
Yet night by night in dreams I hear
Her spirit call me from the sea.
A STORM AT NIGHT All night the waves broke in upon the shore
Beneath my window, and I heard the rain
With querulous, weak fingers, evermore
Beating against the pane. ”

“ Dawendine, Child of Dawning,
Wilt thou fail or follow me?”
And her kinsmen still are waiting her returning from the night,
Waiting, waiting for her coming with her belt of wampum white;
But forgetting all, she follows,
Where he leads through day or night.
There’s a spirit on the river, there’s a ghost upon the shore,
And they sing of love and loving through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence,
And the shadows of the shore. ”

“ The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines;
[68] The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes
As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths
And we were very near her heart.
No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay,
Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May;
Spring's coming is too fierce with life;
And summer is too long;
The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand
Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife. ”

“ At night, twin urns, your eyes are filled with sleep
From some far, silent sea I do not know,
Some far, far sea whither I may not go,
Where you do leave me for the tideless deep.
At dawn when you come back again you keep
Your soul so recessed, hidden from me so,
Our old love seems as steps in melting snow
Hastening unto the twin, dim urns of sleep. ”

“ There she lives again, but her face is white, as it was when she fell from the canoe. On moonlight nights she always looks down upon the earth, searching for the wind, for she does not know that he is invisible. The wind does not know that far away in the moon is the white face of his lost wife, and so he roams through the forest and wanders about the rocks and the mountains, but never thinks of looking up to the moon. ”

“ A new inexpressible consciousness like a tide from the central places of the sea, when the moon is full, swept through her. She saw herself, questioned herself, but no answer came that she could understand. ”

“ She rose to her feet, flung up head and arms; her bosom heaved with a breath of ecstasy, her lips parted, her eyes shone; the glory, power, magic, of the deep flashed into visible embodiment in her. The perfect woman, possessed by the spirit of the sea, unawares took worship of the boy's heart. To seal her supremacy, a wave leaping in the gorge broke to him the unnoted advance of the tide. ”

“ Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, melancholic whirlpools, Melting in the vast sea of bliss. The storm of MAYA stilled By magic wand of intuition deep. The universe, forgotten dream, subconsciously lurks, Ready to invade my newly-wakened memory divine. I live without the cosmic shadow, But it is not, bereft of me; As the sea exists without the waves, But they breathe not without the sea. ”

“ Out of the deep dark ocean of life Love had brought them his great moon-pearl, and they sat on the boat's edge carelessly tossing it from one to the other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on every side. A sudden slip, and they had lost it for ever, and might only watch its shimmering fall to the bottom of the world. Theories! Theories are for the unknown and the unhappy. Who will trouble to theorise about Heaven when he has found Heaven itself? ”

“ The sky becomes bluer all the time, the sun warmer; the sea is too quiet for its name, and the most beautiful blue imaginable.
What are the feelings these sights awaken! They can not be described. To know how great was our happiness, how complete, how free from even the shadow of a sadness, you must make a journey of sixteen days on a stormy ocean. Is it possible that we will ever again be so happy? ”

“ The night-time was the fairest part of this queer trip when we got under the tropic heights, with failing breezes, hot and moist, softly-running surges languidly gushing into a sheet-lightning of phosphoric froth, a full moon that at her meridian came near to the brilliance of sunrise, the planets large, trembling, and of [201] heavenly beauty, a streak of dim fire in the dark water over the counter denoting the subtle, sneaking pursuit of some huge fish; and reflections of white stars like dim water-lilies riding the polished ebony heave when it ran foamless. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BY MRS. HEMANS.
"But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary."
St. Matthew, Chap. xiv. Ver. 24.
Fear was within the tossing bark,
When stormy winds grew loud,
And waves came rolling high and dark,
And the tall mast was bowed.
And men stood breathless in their dread,
And baffled in their skill—
But One was there, who rose and said
To the wild sea, Be still! ”

“ One evening, as if drawn up by some mighty hand, the fog lifted, disclosing the sun, cold, red, and angry-looking, glaring at us out of a sombre sky, and flushing the water and the bergs round about with a flood of purple light, on which our masts and rigging cast tremulous, long, black shadows, crossing and recrossing in a quivering maze, with big, shapeless blotches here and there for the sails. ”

“ A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon—like a ghastly messenger—scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous and suggestive—a spirit-ship it might be—watching in silence to hear away the souls of those lost at sea!
There was deep stillness—unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion) , were, for a season, lost alike in sleep. ”

“ And if you listen some night when the stars are out, and the moon has made a silver path on the sea, you will hear the little waves that swish on the shore softly murmuring a little song. And perhaps, if your ears are very quick, and the big waves’ thunder does not drown the sound of their melody, you may hear them whispering the names of two happy lovers, Florimell and Marinell. ”

“ Some long sombre clouds lowered heavily over the crimson of the horizon as if Night, like some dark-winged bird, was waiting to settle down on the chill earth, and a keen cold wind, blowing sharply from the distant ocean, brought the salt odours of the sea to their nostrils. ”

“ Life and Death with ‘her silver voice’ that they ran from him crying, ‘Away, he is not of our crew.’ When he describes the Moon as part of some beautiful scene he can call her beautiful, but when he personifies, when his words come under the influence of that great memory or of some mysterious tide in the depth of our being, he grows unfriendly or not truly friendly or at the most pitiful. ”

“ You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the edge of ponds, inspired when the sun is setting in an ocean of blood-red clouds and casts red reflections or the river. And at night, under the moon, which passes across the vault of heaven, you think of a thousand strange things which would never have occurred to your mind under the brilliant light of day. ”

“ Since the white day must dawn again so soon,
⁠And early love is diffident and shy,
Oh, charitable clouds conceal the moon
⁠Grant the indulgence of an unstarred sky!
Ah, silver surf, abreak along the shore,
⁠Cease for awhile thy restless ebb and flow.
The silence trembles with thy sullen roar
⁠And the soft voice I love is very low. ”

“ Over the land a shadowy light is spread,
And with the night the storm winds die away.
The waves have brought their burden to her feet,
Her drownèd love, with blood-red seaweed crowned,
Her drownèd love — oh, bitter yoke and sweet
With which love's hands our idle hearts have bound! ”

“ She sank before the weeping Angel, not like the sun, who before all-beholding Nature casts himself so gorgeous into the sea that its red waves strike the very heaven, but like the tranquil moon, who, in the midnight, silvers the vaporous air, and sinks down unseen behind its dim veil. ”

“ The solitude of stormy night upon the ocean! What pen can describe! And yet who can be insensible to the luxury of that solitude—to its melancholy sublimity! As I now write, our ship plunges and rolls in the heavy sea, and a death-like nausea comes over me.
Monday Night, Mar. 22. Lat. 42° 23'. Long. 61° 23'.
Miles made 308. The malady of the sea drove me rather suddenly last night from my pen to the deck. But in an hour the clouds and the gust passed away. The stars came out in all their brilliance. The wind, however, has steadily increased, and it has been quite rough all 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. ”

“ As the night advanced, a slight white mist rose from the river, and the declining moon, bowed over the tops of the forest, seemed to seek the repose of the earth, like a wayward and wandering lover who returns at last to lay his tired and silent head on his beloved's breast. ”

“ And even now after all these years, when I think of these two, so young, so fair, so simple, and of their love, I feel a pang. It tears my heart just as my heart is torn when on certain nights I watch the full moon shining on the lagoon from an unclouded sky. There is always pain in the contemplation of perfect beauty. ”

“ The Heavens are pitiless of human tears;
The deep sea-darkness is about thy head;
The white sail never will bring back the loved!
By the blue waters—the restless ocean waters,
Restless as they with their many-flashing surges,
Lonely I wander, weeping for my lost one! ”

“ Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall,
And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.
The years of your existence are unending.
The years of your unresting are forever.
The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his passion,
And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring,
To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam. ”

“ Its closing portion, commencing with "The Mother's blessing on her Sailor Son," is more particularly adapted to those, whose life is on the sea. In the dim forecastle, may it be as a sunbeam, brightening the memory of home, and its loved ones, and the hope of that better home, where no storm shall drive the bark astray, or divide the true-hearted. ”

“ In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. ”

“ Surely from time to time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as the sun and moon, and as sure to come again. The heart is forever inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy clouds in the calmest and clearest days. The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. ”