Wapping

“ Ring a bell underneath an exhausted receiver, thou wilt scarce hear the sound; give the bell due vibration by free air in warm daylight, or sink it down to the heart of the ocean, where the air, all compressed, fills the vessel around it,' and the chime, heard afar, starts thy soul, checks thy footstep, unto deep calls the deep,—a voice from the ocean is borne to thy soul. ”

“ Is there, in fact, any other difference, except that, in the case of slumber, we have no control over this intellectual experiment, and, in the other, we have the power of varying it at pleasure? When awake we can steer the mental vessel with more or less precision—when asleep our rudder is carried away, and we must drift about at the capricious bidding of our senses, over a confused sea of recollections. ”

“ Wake Is the smooth Water that runs from a Ship's Stern when under Sail, and by it a good Guess may be made of the Speed she makes. Also when one Ship giving Chace to another, is got as far into the Wind as she, and sails directly after her, they say, She has got into her Wake. ”

“ As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had transformed the waters. ”

“ I saw the fate of all was to be decided by the very next wave that was rolling in; and apprehensive that some woman, child, or helpless man would lay hold of me, and entangle my arms or legs and weigh me down, I cried to my servants, both in Arabic and English, We are all lost; if you can swim, follow me; I then let myself down in the face of the wave. Whether that, or the next, filled the boat, I know not, as I went to leeward to make my distance as great as possible. ”

“ Fastening our attention for the moment on surface water waves, the first question we shall ask ourselves is—What is a wave? If we take our station on a high cliff looking down on the sea, on some clear day, when the wind is fresh, we see the waves on its surface like green rounded ridges racing forward, and it appears at first sight as if these elevations were themselves moving masses of water. ”

“ Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul
as it leads. ”

“ After this that strange transition took place, which is like a chaotic mingling of two spheres of life, a rolling together of space and light, one moment oppressing, then again relieving, as the sensation of the diver who, turning around under water, loses the consciousness of up and down until he regains his balance, air and daylight, the transition from dreaming to waking. ”

“ In those dreams I am toiling and toiling through a smooth sea—it is always a smooth, oily, slippery sea—towards something to which I make no great headway. Sometimes I give up toiling through sheer and desperate aching of body and limbs, and let myself lie drifting into helplessness and a growing sleep. ”

“ Waves " is just the word, for every branchlet, every twig, every stem and flower, ofttimes clad in more than rainbow brightness of colour and sparkling with light, seems instinct with half-animal power of life and motion, and even in weather so calm that there is not so much as a ripple upon the ocean's breast, we may see them gently moving to and fro. ”

“ Tangling and spangling the waves with a wealth of light,
Spraying and straying silently through the night;
Dusting and flashing a light in our yeasty wake,
Glowing and splashing wherever the waves we break. ”

“ Once stout oars were in their hands, however, all was changed. To feel the rise and fall of the boat, to skim the crests of waves, to catch the rhythmic rowing that, like a song in the night, seemed to lift them and bear them down—this was life. ”

“ Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! ”

“ So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave, again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. ”

“ Some waves are very like walls, but those are surf-waves, as they are called, that is, waves which break upon a shore. The waves I am thinking of just now are more like mountains—translucent blackish-blue mountains—mountains that look as if they were made of bottle-green glass, like the glass mountain in the fairy tale, or shining mountains of phosphorescent light—meeting you as if, they would overwhelm you, passing under you, and tossing you like the old woman in the blanket, and then running away behind you as you go to meet another. ”

“ The wave which is breaking into foam, which is rippling over the pebbles, which throws up the broken water, which falls back on to the land and makes music, sound, melody as it breaks—that is the wave which is nearly over; it is the wave whose course is run. ”

“ Does the earth, like a harp, shiver into songs with the touch of my feet?
Is it then true that the dewdrops fall from the eyes of the night when I am seen, and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body round? ”

“ In the deep sleep that had come upon the crawler, arms and legs kept raising in a deliberate, dreadful climbing motion. It was as though they had a life of their own—they kept their movement independently of the motionless body. ”

“ A careful observer can in this school of Nature instruct himself in all the laws of wave-motion, and gather a fund of knowledge on this subject during an hour’s dalliance at low tide on some sandy coast, or in the quiet study of seaside pools, the surface of which is corrugated with trains of ripples by the breeze. ”

“ This bodily frame is the product of the Divine soul, as the wave is produced of the water of the sea; and though the bodies are seen to move about as waves, yet their receptacle the soul is ever as steady as the sea;—the reservoir of the moving waves. ”

“ More extended walks were in general possible only in the light of the moon, which as a heavenly body shining everywhere threw its brightness over every thing, in the court, garden and over the street, while candles or lamps at the best lighted one or two rooms. The patient, given to sleep walking or moon walking, went after the light, which meanwhile represented to her from childhood on a symbol of the parents' love and gave hope of sexual enjoyment. ”

“ The music of the waves lulls these beings to sleep. They ride upon a dolphin’s back, or are borne onward by the waves,—free, happy, frolicking water sprites, dashing the spray and diving in graceful play through the deep waves of the sea. ”

“ Dawn is a mingling of stirs: whistle of boat in the river fog, rattle of wagon in the gray cool mists turning and twisting, footbeat solitary on the damp hard pavement—this is dawn coming by the window into my room, to my face. ”

“ Naturally the remaining waves, from the ninth to the thirteenth, are also unfinished, so that out of all the waves which use our scheme as the theatre of their evolution only one finds time to complete all its stages — a fact which, if we can realise all that it involves, gives us a deeply impressive illustration of the vastness of the resources of nature, a glimpse into the illimitable eternities through which, never hastening yet never resting, her unfoldment proceeds with such splendid precision. ”

“ You climb wave after high wave, and are not swallowed up as you expected. You wait, between guns, for the boom and the shock of the next, with a passionate anticipation, as you wait for the next wave. ”

“ I'll take a turn across the fields and have a look at the night on the water. I feel too much awake to be smothered by sheets and blankets. It isn't often we feel life here—and the sensation is glorious. ”

“ Led to this barren void, my eyes—"
He and his voice despair.
Lightly the waves play o'er the deep
And 'neath the tower, near the shore,
The whispering waves that churn and break,
Seem to have lulled the man to sleep. ”

“ Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends, And, swell’d with tempests, on the ship descends; White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud Howl o’er the masts, and sing through every shroud: Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears; And instant death on every wave appears. ”

“ So though the name and form of wave could never be without water that was fashioned into the wave by them, yet the name and form themselves were not the wave. They die as soon as ever it returns to water. ”

“ But when the sun was above the horizon, the air which had been thin and pale grew every moment richer and warmer, and the sounds of life became bolder and more full of courage and authority. By degrees the smoke began to ascend in wavering breaths over the houses, and these slowly thickened, until they were as round and straight as columns, and instead of striking upon pale white blinds, the sun shone upon dark windows, beyond which there was depth and space. ”

“ Now and again as they fed, the whole flock would rise momentarily into air and float up as though blown from the earth by some invisible breath, and then, as silently and simultaneously, sink to earth again. ”

“ Between daylight and dark as the myriad sounds of life die away one by one, the chirp of birds, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, so do the natural sounds such as the rustle of trees, the plash of falling water, or the roar of breaking waves wake into a new force that strikes on the ear with a sense of intention or conscious power. ”

“ There was something strange and weird in this performance, for the impenetrable darkness, the star-like lamp, the wailing voices of unseen figures, seemed altogether unnatural. It begot in me a shudder that I could not repress, for the moaning and wailing appeared to be associated with death rather than life. ”

“ Waves rise, each to its individual height in a seeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to a certain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea to which they are all related, and to which they must all return in a rhythm which is marvellously beautiful. ”

“ What is the reason for the strange leaps they make into the air, falling back on to the water with a thudding splash that can be heard a mile away? It is usually done by night, a circumstance that adds to the strangeness of this sudden obtrusion upon our minds of the existence of a scarcely known world beneath the water, which we, in our preoccupation with our own half of the world, had almost forgotten. ”

“ And in sleep, when you dream under the influence of fear, all the robbers, fires, and precipices, that you formerly have seen or heard of, arise before you with terrible vivacity. All these sensual motions, like the muscular ones above mentioned, are performed with strength and velocity in proportion to the energy of the sensation of pleasure or pain, which excites them, and the quantity of sensorial power. ”

“ In sleep walking a person rises from his bed in the night, apparently asleep, walks around with closed or half opened eyes, but without perceiving anything, yet performs all sorts of apparently purposeful and often quite complicated actions and gives correct answers to questions, without afterward the least knowledge of what he has said or done. If this all happens at the very time and under the influence of the full moon, it is spoken of as moon walking or being moonstruck. ”

“ Sometimes it seemed to blend with the buzzing of those angry wasps above and sometimes the two rhythms would vie with each other for speed, so that they hurried along each alternately ahead of the other. I came to a line where my memory failed me. I faltered for a moment, but the droning sound seemed to grow into an enormous roar, and I leapt back to the beginning:
"He above the rest...." ”

“ It is my purpose to bring also our beautiful literature to the solution of the exceedingly difficult and obscure problem of sleep walking and moon walking. Our poets, for all our psychiatrists and psychologists, possess the finest knowledge of the psyche and during the centuries before science was able to throw light upon the puzzles of the mind, they solved them prophetically with discerning spirit. ”

“ Sea and sky are of a rapturous blue, and a pleasant summer breeze is blowing in from the sea. The great yachting question of the morning, 'What shall we do to-day?' is scarcely debated at breakfast at all. ”

“ Everything progresses in waves. The march of civilization, the progression of worlds, is in waves. All human activities likewise progress in waves — art, literature, science, religion.
Great waves succeed each other, and between these great waves is a quiet, a calm, a period of rest, a period of recuperation. ”

“ Two pair of waves travel round the earth every day, the greater pair obedient to the moon, which, because she is so much nearer to us, has a greater power of drawing the water to herself than the sun has ”

“ Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound—a roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal fraction of time—such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of cannon. ”

“ When you lay down and when you arose, you would have had in your ears the thunderous beat of countless thousands of white-lipped angry waves on the long level reaches of sand, that stretched away southward for miles as far as the eye could reach. ”

“ The hour strikes, and by its act the immense sky seems to lighten. Between the pendulum buried in the heart of a sick-room and the flaming angel which successively reaches in the sky all the points prescribed by its circular flight, there is an exact response. ”

“ A wave strikes her as she reaches it, and dashes her once more to the ground. For a second time she is swept like a straw along the deck, and for the second time the ebb arrests her progress, and leaves her in the same position as before. ”