Spirit of the times. [volume] (Ironton, Ohio) 1853-1858, 1853-09-13
The Voice Of the Ocean.

He VOICE OI the OCc1ns
Was it the sound Of the distant surf
that was in mine ears, or the low moan
Of the breeze as it cropt through the
neighboring wood? Oh, that hoarse
voice Of Ocean, never silent since time
first began-wherc has it not been utter.
ed? There is stiffness amid the calm
of the arid and rainlcss desert, where no
spring iiscs, and no strcamlet flows,
and the long caravan plies its weary
march amid the binding glare of the
sand, and the red unshaded rays of the
fierce sun. But once and again, and
yet again, has the roar of Ocean been
there. II is his sands that the winds
heap up; AMI it is the skeleton remains
Of his vassals-shclls, an fish, and
the stony coral-,hnt the rocks under.
meath inclose. There is silence on the
tall mountain peak, with lis glillering
mantle Of snow, where the painting lungs
labor to inhale the thin, bleak air
where no insect murmurs, and no bird
flies, and where the eye wand, ,rs over
muIlitudinous hill tops that lie far be.
neath, and vast dark forests that sweep
on TO the distant horizon, and along
long hollow valleys where the great riv.
ers begin. And yet once and again,
and yet again, has the roar of Ocean
been there. The cfigies of his more
ancient denizens We find sculptured on
the crags, where they jut from beneath
the ice into the mist wreath; and his
later beaches, stage beyond stage, ter.
race the descending slopes. Where has
the great destroyer not been-the dc.
vourer Of contincnts-thc blue, foaming
dra- on, whose vocation is TO eat up the
land? His icellocs have alike furrow.
ed the fiat steppes Of Siberia, and the
rocky nanks of Schehallion, and his
mumuliles and fish lie imbedded in
great stones of the pyramids, hewn in
times Of the old Pharaohs, and in rocky
folds of Lebanon, still untouched by
the tool. So long as Ocean exists there
must be disin,eglalion, dlapidation,
change; and should the time ever ar.
rive when the elcvalory agencies, mo.
tionless and chill, shall sleep within
their profound depths, to awaken no
morc-and should the sea still contin.
ue TO impel its currents and TO roll its
waves-cvcry continent and island
would at length d supre r, and again as
Of old, when the foundations of the
great deep were broken up"
"A shorclcss ocean tumble round .le globe"
Was it with reference TO this prnci
f pie, so recently recognized, that we are
so expressly told in the Apocalypse re
specting the renovated earth, in which
the state of things shall be fixed and
, eternal, "lhat there shall be no more
, sea?" or are we TO regard the Revcla
lation as the mere hieroslyphic-th'
pictured shape Of some analogous truth
''Reasoning from what we know, an'
what else remains to us?-an carll
without q sea would be an earh wirhou
5 rain, without vegetation. without lile-i
t dead and dolc(ul planet of waste pla
I. ces, such as the telescope reveals to u'
in the moon. And yet the Ocean does
seem peculiarly creature Of time-o
all the great agents of vicissitude ant
5 change, the most influential and unit
ring; and to a state in which there shall
be no vicissitude, and no change-il
which the earthquake shall not heav
from beneath, nor the mountains wea
down and the continents melt away
seems inevitably necessary that ther
should be "no more sea-" Gin. Pal
lor Magazine.