'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;'

but few tokens of this 'delight' are to be observed in his poetry. He
has, indeed, his allusions to 'tumbling billows' and 'surging foam;'
to southern climes where 'wild-meeting oceans boil;' to 'life's rough
ocean' and 'life's stormy main;' to 'hard-blowing gales;' to the
'raging sea,' 'raging billows,' 'boundless oceans roaring wide,' and
the like; but these are the stock-metaphors of every poet, and would
be familiar to him even had he never overpassed the frontiers of
Bohemia.

One sea-picture, and one alone, is to be found in Burns, and this, it
is freely admitted, is exquisite:

'Behold the hour, the boat arrive;
Thou goest, thou darling of my heart!
Severed from thee, can I survive?
But fate has willed, and we must part.
I'll often greet this surging swell,
Yon distant isle will often hail:
E'en here I took the last farewell;
There latest marked her vanished sail.

Along the solitary shore,
While flitting sea-fowl round me cry,
Across the rolling, dashing roar,
I'll westward turn my wistful eye:
Happy thou Indian grove, I'll say,