translucent opalescence framed in gleaming greens and tender
greys, wreathed with the radiance of the foam, are of inimitable
charm. Its gamuts of sounds, the faint lisp of the wavelet on the
pebbly beach, the rhythmic rise and fall of the plashing or
plunging surf, the roar and scream of the breaker, and the boom
of the billow, are of inimitable range. What marvel is it that
even the commonplace of the sons of men yield themselves
gladly to a spell they cannot analyse, content to linger, to gaze,
and to ponder!

If the spell of the waves enthralls the ordinary mortal, how
much more those whose aesthetic and spiritual senses are keen
and disciplined? Coleridge, while listening to the tide, with eyes
closed, but with mind alert, finds his thoughts wandering back
to


"that blind bard who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea."

Swinburne, listening to the same music, exclaims:

"Yea, surely the sea like a harper
Laid his hand on the shore like a lyre."

Sometimes the emphasis is on the sympathy with the striving
forces manifested in the ceaseless activity of the ocean as it