The Strife of Waters

Loud on the pebbled shore the Mad Sea King
Vexed to be lapped by so vile a thing.
Dragged down the grinding flints and hurled them back,
Growling and bounding like a hungry pack
Of unleashed seaghounds on their prey let slip
While, the hoarse Sea God from his foaming lip
Pronounced this haughty menace and made boast
To all the dwellers of the trembling coast:
“I am the Sovereign of unnumbered waves
That haunt the darkness of their sea-green caves,
And rock-bound islands where my legions leap
And bear your hamlets to the insatiate deep.
My empire stretches from the earth’s black core,
Upward and outward to its farthest shore
And around the poles, unstained by man’s device,
Where Death sits throned in everlasting ice.
Your crumbling mountains crawl to my abyss,
And green savannahs vanish at the hiss
Of my dissolving foam-crests, even as they;
My dread omnipotence who may disobey?
O’er buried towns and many an ancient grove
My huge Leviathan and Kraken rove.
And yet shall rove through vast cathedral aisles
And palace halls where pampered Beauty smiles.
Mine are the lands that feed the hungry sea.
And mine the rock-ribbed continents shall be!
Your iron navies, and the wealth untold
Of laden bark of ancient silks and gold,
Shall pave the chambers of my nether zones
Mixed with the maiden’s pearls and seaman’s bones!

Over my fields the black-winged tempests fly
From gloomy bastions of the frowning sky,
And lavish insults on the hoary main,
With hail and fire, and scourging hurricane;
In fierce retort the maddened billows climb
Th’invading heaven, with arrogance sublime,
And quench the stars through many a gloomy night;
Their dim ghosts hover in phosphoric light,
Where helmless barks on ambushed crags are hurled,
And ruin hols above a frenzied World!
What power on earth shall hold me subject now?
To whom in tame allegiance shall I bow?”

“To Me!,” the Genius of the Rivers cried;
“Without my gifts your hollow gulfs ere dried;
I bring the treasures of the wooded hills,
Vast floods that drink a thousand mountain rills
From icy urns the palsied glacier spills;
I am the nursing Mother of the Sea,
Let all your stormy billows worship me!
Man kneels to me to quench his simple thirst,
And all his flocks are on my bounty thrust[?].
I turn his groaning mills to grind his corn,
And waft his harvests to their distant bourn,
He seeks my steep ravines in centuried woods
Where down the cliffs I hurl the foaming floods,
Even as a pilgrim to some sacred shrine
And all his virgin Nymphs bring praise to mine!
The green earth gladdens in my rippling glee
And burning deserts gasp for lack of me!
Great Nature’s great Preserver with no peer,
Lord of the pageants of the teeming year,
Alone to me an undivided chain,—
What power shall rob me of my honest fame?”

The mellow music of a falling shower
Came softly sprinkling on a leafy bower—
A crystalline murmur through the listening calm
Like diamonds poured from rosy palm to palm
Of a fair maiden, and along the plain
Moved the bright Angel of the Summer Rian – 
From whose melodious voice came this reply:
“Proud Boaster of unshared renown, ‘tis I!
Where juster claim shall leave thee but the boast
To be the servant of my twinkling host;
I feed the billows of the sounding main
And golden waves that cloud the ripening grain.
When I forget my immemorial trust
Your river-beds are choked with barren dust.
You only bear my tribute to the sea,
Man and his harvests lean their hopes on me.
Bright in the heavens I bend the sevenfold bow
That gleams with promise see the world below
The famished lands look yp and bless the Power
That pours ever plenty in the lavish shower.
From the last rill that threads the pebbled Run
To the sea-broad, majestic Amazon
You live from me alone, even as the blue
Tremendous Ocean takes my gift through you!
Cease, then, your idle boast, since all the pride
And wealth of waters in my rain-drops hide!”

“Nay, gentle Shower-Nymph!” a still voice replied
“In your presumption you, meseems, disown
The Mighty Mother – not of you alone
But the vast concourse of the watery zone;
I am the Genius of the boundless Mist
Seen or unseen my living shape exist. —
Blue in the luminous heavens, or tender gray
When filmy vapors veil the eye of Day – 
My savory ?? catch the morning beam
Or sunset’s burning glory, till they seem
The prize of Jason and the Argonauts;
Yet more, to tame your overweening thoughts,
Remember this, that ancient records tell,
Before your showers on sinless Eden fell
A mist ent up and watered all the land.
in its cool breath the fervid heavens grew blond[?]
Under my mantle bloomed the infant-world
That your fierce down-pour into ruin hurled
My empire stretched o’er all its fair domain
Before the seas, the rivers, and the rain,
‘Twas I alone that gave them poer to be,
Vail your unseemly pride, and bow to me!”

The Ocean roared rebellious in its walls,
The angry Rivers thundered down their Falls,
The Rain burst torrent-like from every cloud
And Mist involved them in its smothering shroud!
All claimed precedence till it well might seem
Primeval Chaos had returned supreme!
A Voice, —say rather a universal Breath—
At which the tumult sunk to sudden death—
Pervaded Space, and hushed the rebel noise,
Holding the curled billows on the poise.
The trembling cataracts in suspense, the rain
Checked in mid torrent, o’er the astonished plain,
And all as dumb as the black cliffs they smote!
White o’er the spirit, as from deeps remote,
The murmurous motion trembled into speech
That to some inward ear, alone could reach. 
In feeble words, if I translate the thought
Behold the meaning that my spirit caught:—

“Powers elemental, nurture strife no more
Between your rival forms of sea and shore!
Ocean and River, Rain and wandering Mist
Are one sole Being by one Mother kissed;
The crawling glacier and the wingèd snow,
And hail that smites the waving fields below
Are of your kindred, all the protean swarm 
That sun and frost to either shape transform/
Up from the sea a Vapor seeps unseen
And build an armory in blue serene
The peopled earth in serried ranks assail
With kindly rain or devastating hail,
That change to bubbling springs and dancing rills
And thence to Rivers, drawn from all the hills—
The Rivers roll their tribute, full and free,
From every valley to the insatiate Sea,
When, back to heaven the subtle vapors climb,
Still round and round through all the gyres of time;
Each on the other is forever invest[?];
No form is final and no fashion first!
The least pale atom of dissolving dew
Threads every billow of the boundless blue
Of ocean, whose immeasurable main
Floats o’er the azure skies to fall in rain.
Mutual dependence demands mutual peace
One Being, the same through all, let every discord cease!”