Beach

“ The beach at night has a voice all its own, a sound in fullest harmony with its spirit and mood—with its little, dry noise of sand forever moving, with its solemn, overspilling, rhythmic seas, with its eternity of stars that sometimes seem to hang down like lamps from the high heavens—and that sound the piping of a bird. As I walk the beach in early summer my solitary coming disturbs it on its nest, and it flies away, troubled, invisible, piping its sweet, plaintive cry. The bird I write of is the piping plover, Charadrius melodus, sometimes called the beach plover or the mourning bird. ”

“ There lies a beach, upon which the surf is breaking in long, white swells; and there are the trees upon the sides and summits of the hills. What a world of new and curious objects we are about to behold! What a variety of trees and other plants and flowers and fruits! What grand and beautiful scenery! ”

“ DOVER BEACH.
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in. ”

“ Dizzy precipices of chalk stand like sugar-loaves against the blue sky, here and there cleft in a tortuous, yawning chasm. Beneath, the beach seems to slumber, so gentle is that lisping murmur, where the long billowy swell washes the face of the skerries, and lifts up and down their heavy fringe of tangle like a giant’s beard. ”

“ And how color and sound stood out in the transparent air! How audibly the little ripples on the beach whispered to the open sky! How our irreverent voices seemed to jar upon the privacy of the little cove! The mossy rocks doubled themselves without a flaw in the clear, dark water. The gleaming white beach lay fringed with its deep deposits of odorous sea-weed, gleaming black. The steep, straggling sides of the cliffs raised aloft their rugged angles against the burning blue of the sky. ”

“ The beach of such a pure dazzling white, backed by the tall, green cocoa-nut trees, waving their spreading heads to the fresh breeze, the dark blue of the sky, and the deeper blue of the transparent sea, occasionally varied into green as we passed by the coral rocks which threw their branches out from the bottom—the town opening to our view by degrees, houses after houses, so neat, with their green jalousies, dotting the landscape, the fort with the colours flying, troops of officers riding down, a busy population of all colours, relieved by the whiteness of their dress. ”

“ The long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. ”

“ Up and up the beach it marches with a majestic will that nothing else in the world is like; as it comes it lifts itself higher and higher; then the wave leaps into the air and its crest is turned to emerald as the sunlight strikes through it for the pause of another instant, there is a roll, a mad plunge, the spray dashes high above your head, the foam floats and flies up the beach to your very feet, the hollow rumble of the water sounds fainter and farther along the sands, and the ocean draws itself back away from you and away from the land. ”

“ There is a strip of beach upon the Sussex coast, so many miles from nowhere, where the sand-snipe gather and seldom a human being may be seen. There, as a lad, I would love to roam, with no certain object in view, but just to find what I could, to observe what chanced to come my way, and, when wearied of wandering, to sit upon the shingle over and above those plains of wet, grey sand and think of all manner of things as my boyish fancy pleased. ”

“ Turn you seaward, at low tide there lies sand again and shingle (albeit but a narrow beach, for here a depth of water sinks rapidly) laved with relentless obstinacy by long, furling, growling rollers that are grey at their sluggish base and emerald-lighted at their curvetting crest. ”

“ I frequently amused myself by walking for miles on the sandy beach, and picking up some of the pretty shells among the millions that lay scattered along. It is as fine a walk as a pensive maiden, in contemplative mood, could desire. On the one hand, is the ever-toiling ocean, whose waves break upon the sand bars, and in giddy globes of foam, lash the shore, and spend their force beneath your feet: on the other, a low, sandy bluff, and then an extended lawn, stretching far away into the interior, and its utmost verge skirted with stately forest trees ”

“ Imagine a circular beach of glistening coral sand and green vegetation from five to fifty yards wide, thrust up through the sea for all the world like a hedge, and enclosing a garden of coral fronds submerged under water so still and clear as to be hardly visible, and you have an atoll as I saw it from the masthead. ”

“ The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. ”

“ The sea, clothed round with raiment of white waves, and rich with sparkling life, dashing itself along the beach, breathes a monotonous murmur that wafts itself inland and falls with vague music upon the listening ear. ”

“ And nature is there to keep all this strange medley in countenance. Down upon the beach, where the fishers stow their craft when the day’s work is over at sea, and where the little dark-eyed children, ragged and dirty, play in and out the nets upon the shingle, the wind blows hot from off the great moving plain of the Mediterranean and the sun shines heavily for many an hour upon the houses and groves and gardens that are on the water’s level. ”

“ The eye, however, has perceived no change; the immense beach is smooth and tranquil, all the sand has the same aspect, nothing distinguishes the soil that is solid from that which is not solid; the joyous little cloud of sand-lice continues to leap tumultuously under the feet of the passer-by. ”

“ Then, when we approach the water’s edge, we find a delight in watching the approaching waves as they roll over the sandy or pebbly beach, or embrace an outlying rock, gently raising its olive covering of dangling weeds. ”

“ In the middle lies an expanse of deep sand, and the blue waters roll in between the rocks and gently break on a shingly beach, where the tiniest shells and pebbles mingle to make the one drop of bitterness in the bather's cup. ”

“ Leading the swinging boat's crew to the beach;
And all the world slides up—
And then the stars slide down—
As ocean breathes; while evening falls,
And destiny is being rowed ashore.
The twilight-muffled bells of town, the bark of dogs,
The distant shouts, and smell of burning wood,
Fall graciously upon their sea-tired sense.
Wide-trousered, barefoot sailors carry them to land,
Tho' snake-voiced waves flaunt frothing up the beach ”

“ When the rain-drops blew fierce and wild in the gale, she would start across the garden, out by the little gate to the beach, and, close by the edge of the angry sea, watch the great waves rolling in to her feet, and as she looked, her eyes grew large and luminous, and she would draw great breaths of delight ”

“ The beach is full of interesting little colour subjects. The air is clear, and the water reflects the light; bright caps and frocks, sails and seaweed, and the striped tents and scarlet buckets are all most attractive. ”

“ From the crest of a grassy ridge and the crown of a tall hill, and the sad grey beach, I tried to resolve what was imaged but three miles away, and to ascertain whether it was tawny land, or grey water, or ashen sky, but all in vain. ”

“ The beach she left, which less and less appears.
The courser, who was swimming to the right,
After a mighty sweep, the lady bears
To shore, where rock and cavern shag the brink,
As night upon the land begins to sink. ”

“ One was yonder beautiful edifice, now so frequented as a public library; the other was the beach—the roar of which has so often mingled with the worship of this place—my daily resort; dear to me in the sunshine, still more attractive in the storm. Seldom do I visit it now without thinking of the work which there, in the sight of that beauty, in the sound of those waves, was carried on in my soul. No spot on earth has helped to form me so much as that beach. ”

“ ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE.
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. ”

“ You see deep, dark places amongst the lights; there are the park lands. Then raise your eyes and look farther west; there is the sea. It shines as a silver mirror. The soft winds from the west are blowing, and the wavelets, dancing in the light of the moon, play with her shining rays as they leap on to break gently on the sandy beach. ”

“ All these things tell us that at one time these two rivers ran into the sea where now the beach stands, and that the waves and the creeping sand got the best of the rivers, and altered the whole face of the country hereabouts. Where once was an inlet and a swift river is now a beach and a broad shallow-stream, lined with marshes, and slowly filling up with salt grasses and soft mud washed down from the red soil of the hills. ”

“ And not a living being anywhere around, except us. And the beach is the loveliest beach I ever dreamed of—and you see it is the first real beach I have ever seen. It is wide and hard and part of it is wet where the big waves roll in and it moans beautifully. And there are lots of little funny flowers, like wild sweet peas, and pretty grasses grow on it and the sand up away from the water is white and glistens like jewels. ”

“ A little inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind, and over-grown by patches of blue-green marram-grass and other sandy seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills, choosing a spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours, you will soon be amused by seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in every direction. ”

“ The ocean is so near that the music of its rolling beach comes like a gentle lullaby through the clustering branches of the scented trees, bringing the hush of the still small voice that reminds us of the presence of Deity. ”

“ A splendid beach of sand, upon which at short intervals two picturesque rivers debouched to the sea, surrounded with wooded heights of all degrees of altitude, and with many variations in the colour of the foliage, it is not to be wondered at that persons managed in this charming scene to forget the world and to reveal whatever of poetry lay dormant in their composition. ”

“ It is a vast, rank, lusty place, this beach of ours, strewn with horseshoes and crabs, and razor-clams, and whatever wrecks the sea casts up; corpses of men and beasts bleaching and rotting in the sun and waves,—and each tide turns them in their beds, and brings fresh sand to be their pillows. ”

“ To sea-side naturalists it must be a matter of great surprise that of the inhabitants of our coast towns and villages, and of the pleasure-seekers that swarm on various parts of the coast during the holiday season, so few take a real interest in the natural history of the shore. The tide flows and ebbs and the restless waves incessantly roll on the beach without arousing a thought as to the nature and cause of their movements. The beach itself teems with peculiar forms of life that are scarcely noticed except when they disturb the peace of the resting visitor. ”

“ There is the wide, gradually shelving beach, ceaselessly washed by the rolling surf, crowded with people of all ages and stations, bobbing in the water, frolicking on the beach, or sedately seated in the shaded chairs. Back on the beach runs the long line of hotels and cottages that we find at all great ocean resorts. ”

“ Nor is it less beautiful, when the breeze is gentle, to watch the waves rolling majestically in, the hot sun shining through the long well-dressed line as if it were through purest glass of the brightest sea-green, and then to observe the rearing crests tumbling grandly over as they charge to the death and deliver themselves one after another on the rocky beach, which with a calm steadiness receives the shock. ”

“ They followed down the shore, sometimes upon the old and broken flume that runs along the seaward face of the hills that rise from the beach, or sometimes upon the beach itself, stepping from bowlder to bowlder, or holding along at the edge of the water upon reaches of white, hard sand. ”

“ As soon as I picked myself up and got breath, I walked shorewards and found, with great satisfaction, that the ledge joined the shelving beach, and so walked on in the blue obscurity of the cliff shadow back from the falls in the bare hope that the beach might lead by some way into the gully through which we had come and open country beyond. ”

“ If you have never yet had an opportunity to stroll along the smooth sands of an ocean beach at low tide, and gather your basketful of beautiful shells, curious sponges, bits of coral and coralline, while your soul is soothed by the rhythmic music of the surf, then I pity you. You have indeed yet something left to live for. ”