Patrick Regan has kindly shared the material from his George Heath site with readers of the Victorian Web, who may wish to consult the original.
Oh! thou glorious, far-off ocean,
Basking in thy realm of pride!
Matchless, all unrivalled monarch
Of an empire vast and wide!
Oh! I never yet beside thee
Stood, enchanted with the sight,
But the raptured tale has reached me
Of thy grandeur and thy might;
Of the myriad-handed commerce
Which thy turbid wave affords,
Of thy gulphed and buried millions,
Of thy glittering, golden hoards!
And I oft in dreams behold thee,
Hear thy voice's thundering bass,
See the mad, impassioned fury
Of thy storm-distorted face,
And thy anger-pallid billows
Lapsing wildly o'er and o'er,
And, in calm, thy laughing wavelets
Toying with the virgin shore,
Rimpling, twinkling 'neath the starlight,
Shimmering in the moonlight streak;
Then the noontide glory streaming
O'er thy flushed and slumberous cheek,
And the distant white-robed vessels,
Netted o'er with web-like strings;
And the many sea-birds floating
Round and round on wool-white wings.
And I long, O mighty ocean!
Evermore thy face to see,
As the face of that bright maiden,
Dear as is my life to me.
But I'm bound a weary prisoner,
Mid these bleak and wintry hills;
And a dusky stretch of landscape
Evermore my vision fills.
But should Fate, just once, permit me
On thy shore to stand one hour,
There enwrapt to gaze upon thee
In thy wonder and thy power.
Watch the ever-changing aspect,
Of thy bright but treacherous breast,
In the tempest of its passion,
In the glamour of its rest.
O! a holy satisfaction,
And an awed and mystic joy;
And a higher aspiration,
And a loftier reach of eye,
And a wider range of feeling
Will awake to life in me,
With a grander wonder-worship
Of the hand that fashioned thee!
Last modified 4 September 2002