OCEAN exhibits, fathomless and broad,
Much of the power and majesty of God.

He swathes about the swelling of the deep,

That shines and rests, as infants smile and sleep.
Vast as it is, it answers as it flows

The breathings of the lightest air that blows;
Curling and whit'ning over all the waste,
The rising waves obey th' increasing blast,
Abrupt and horrid as the tempest roars,
Thunder and flash upon the steadfast shores,
Till He, that rides the whirlwind, checks the rein,
Then all the world of waters sleeps again.

COWPER.

GLEN ALMAIN; OR, THE NARROW GLEN.

IN this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one,
He sang of battles, and the breath

Of stormy war, and violent death;

And should, methinks, when all was past,

Have rightfully been laid at last

Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent

As by a spirit turbulent;

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,

And everything unreconcil'd;

In some complaining dim retreat,

For fear and melancholy meet;

But this is calm: there cannot be

A more entire tranquillity.

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?

Or is it but a groundless creed?

What matters it? I blame them not

Whose fancy in this lonely spot

Was moved, and in this way express'd

Their notion of its perfect rest.
A convent, even a hermit's cell,
Would break the silence of this Dell:

It is not quiet, is not ease;

But something deeper far than these :

The separation that is here

Is of the grave; and of austere
And happy feelings of the dead:
And therefore was it rightly said
That Ossian, last of all his race!
Lies buried in this lonely place.

WORDSWORTH.