Nahant ! fair diamond of the ocean flood !
Thou gem of waves ! thou maiden of the sea !
Standing like Venus, when at first she rose
From out the foaming tide, in all her smiles !
Whose dark rocks, burnished by the midnight moon,
Rise like the castles of enchanted land,
Gemmed with the spray of ocean as with pearls !
Above thy frowning battlements, the bird
Of ocean soars, like a white flag aloft,
Streaming in air. And when the ocean storms
Come from the east afar, and dash their waves,
Like squadrons of an endless multitude
Of armed and white plumed warriors, on thy rocks,



SEA SHELLS. ijj

That rear their iron towers impregnable,

And then fall back resurgent, the loud roar

Sounds like the thunder of a nation's war !

And when the storm retires, and the vexed waves

Are murmuring their defeat, a mournful sound,

Like the lone gun, that every minute comes

From the lost bark at sea, is heard to break,

And send its subterranean thunder out,

As the wave gurgles in the caverned rock!

When winter winds, those tyrants of the north,

Have swept the foliage from thy emerald glades,

Thy white pavilioned mounds are then as drear

As desolation's dwellings ! The cold blasts.
