Joaquin Miller - Sea Quotes

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Man's books are but man's alphabet,
Beyond and on his lessons lie — The lessons of the violet,
The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil: The toil that nature ever taught,
The patient toil, the constant stir,
The toil of seas where shores are wrought,
The toil of Christ, the carpenter;
The toil of God incessantly
By palm-set land or frozen sea.

Joaquin Miller
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.

Joaquin Miller
Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus!
Rude, as all roads I have trod —
Yet are steeps and stone-strown passes
Smooth o'er head, and nearest God. Here black thunders of my canyon
Shake its walls in Titan wars!
Here white sea-born clouds companion
With such peaks as know the stars!

Joaquin Miller
These be but men. We may forget
The wild sea-king, the tawny brave,
The frowning wold, the woody shore,
The tall-built, sunburnt men of Mars... But what and who was she, the fair?
The fairest face that ever yet
Look'd in a wave as in a glass;
That look'd as look the still, far stars,
So woman-like, into the wave
To contemplate their beauty there,
Yet look as looking anywhere?

Joaquin Miller
Beside
The grim old sea-king sits his bride,
A sun-land blossom, rudely torn
From tropic forests to be worn
Above as stern a breast as e'er
Stood king at sea or anywhere.

Joaquin Miller
Behold this sea, that sapphire sky!
Where nature does so much for man,
Shall man not set his standard high,
And hold some higher, holier plan?
Some loftier plan than ever planned
By outworn book of outworn land? Where God has done so much for man,
Shall man for God do aught at all?
The soul that feeds on books alone —
I count that soul exceeding small
That lives alone by book and creed,—
A soul that has not learned to read.

Joaquin Miller
O, the sea of lights for streaming
When the thousand flags are furled—
When the gleaming bay lies dreaming
As it duplicates the world! You will come my dearest, truest!
Come my sovereign queen often;
My blue skies will then be bluest;
My white rose be whitest then: Then the song! Ah, then the sabre
Flashing up the walls of night!
Hate of wrong and love of neighbor
Rhymes of battle for the Right!

Joaquin Miller
Lo! all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky.

Joaquin Miller
A grand old Neptune in the prow,
Gray-hair'd, and white with touch of time,
Yet strong as in his middle prime;
A grizzled king, I see him now,
With beard as blown by wind of seas,
And wild and white as white sea-storm,
Stand up, turn suddenly, look back
Along the low boat's wrinkled track,
Then fold his mantle round a form
Broad-built as any Hercules,
And so sit silently.

Joaquin Miller
I throw a kiss across the sea, I drink the winds as drinking wine, And dream they all are blown from thee, I catch the whisper'd kiss of thine.

Joaquin Miller