Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, are all with thee!

SEAWEED.

Originally published in Graham's Magazine, January, 1845, and then in the collection The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems, but transferred by Mr. Longfellow to this division in his latest collective edition.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches

Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion

Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, erelong

From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor

That forever

Wrestle with the tides of Fate;

From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart ;

Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

CHRYSAOR.

In the first edition of The Seaside and the Fireside this poem bore the title of The Evening Star.

JUST above yon sandy bar,

As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star

Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

Into the ocean faint and far

Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

Chrysaor, rising out of the sea,

Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,

Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,

Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

Thus o'er the ocean faint and far

Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly;

Is it a God, or is it a star

That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!

THE SECRET OF THE SEA.

AH! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!

All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,

Such as gleam in ancient lore ; And the singing of the sailors, And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad
Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
And the sailor's mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
Flow its unrhymed lyric lines; -

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
Steering onward to the land; —

How he heard the ancient helmsman
Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing,

And he cried, with impulse strong, "Helmsman! for the love of heaven,

Teach me, too, that wondrous song!"

"Wouldst thou," - so the helmsman answered, "Learn the secret of the sea?

Line 16. Onward steering to the land;