POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.

TO THE SEA.

O BEAUTIFUL, O faithless Sea !
Thou peerless in magnificence—
Thou darkest in fatality ! fatality: This refers to the sea's reputation for causing death and shipwrecks.
Heaven be his stay and sure defence
Who trusteth in thy constancy ! constancy: The poet uses irony here, as the sea is famously inconstant or unpredictable.

The hardy one, who, for a life
Of little joy and frequent strife,
Upon thy changeful breast to roam,
Hath bartered bartered: exchanged or traded away all the sweets of home,—
When years have dimmed his lustrous eye
And silvered o'er his raven hair, A poetic description of a sailor who has grown old and grey at sea.
And spared his life to linger by
The hearth his childhood loved to share,