WAVES

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

—Bible (Old Testament)

When Britain first, at heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: 'Rule,Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.'

—Thomson,James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wandererötill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

—Arnold, Matthew

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor, So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore, Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

—Milton,John

Love-whispering woods, and lute-resounding waves.

—Pope, Alexander

Many-maned scud-thumper, tub of male whales, maker of worn wood, shrub- ruster, sky-mocker, rave! portly pusher of waves, wind-slave.

—Updike,John Hoyer

Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

—Bible (Old Testament)

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazedöand gazedöbut little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

—Wordsworth,William

Here, where the world is quiet, Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds'and spent waves'riot In doubtful dreams of dreams.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

[He] made himself the rock against which crashed the successive waves of dissent.

—Schoenbaum,ThomasJ

Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider.

—Rochdale

I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

   One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washe'  d it away; Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. 'Vain man,'said she,'that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise, For I my self shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipe'  d out likewise.' 'Not so,'quod I,'let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where when as death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

—Spenser, Edmund

'The sea, Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?' She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves. 'Yes, yes,' he said.'But I know that theyare always saying something. Always the same thing.What place is over there?'† Shetold himthere was another country opposite, but he said he didn't mean that; he meant farther awayö farther away! Veryoften afterwards, inthemidst of their talk, he would breakoff, to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Alas! so all things now do hold their peace, Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing† Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less; So am not I whom love, alas, doth wring, Bringing before my face the great increase Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing, In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease. For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring, But by and by the cause of my disease Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting, When that I think what grief it is again To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

—Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of

   Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves, And the constant click and kissing of the trolley busses hissing Is the level to the Wealdstone turned to waves.

—Betjeman, SirJohn