The shower of moonlight falls as still and clear
 Upon this desert main
As where sweet flowers some pastoral garden cheer
 With fragrance after rain:
The wild winds rustle in piping shrouds,
 As in the quivering trees:
Like summer fields, beneath the shadowy clouds
 The yielding waters darken in the breeze.

Thou too art here with thy soft inland tones,
 Mother of our new birth;
The lonely ocean learns thy orisons,
 And loves thy sacred mirth:
When storms are high, or when the fires of war
 Come lightening round our course,
Thou breath'st a note like music from afar,
 Tempering rude hearts with calm angelic force.

Far, far away, the homesick seaman's hoard,
 Thy fragrant tokens live,
Like flower-leaves in a previous volume stored,
 To solace and relieve
Some heart too weary of the restless world;
 Or like thy Sabbath Cross,
That o'er this brightening billow streams unfurled,
 Whatever gale the labouring vessel toss.

Oh, kindly soothing in high Victory's hour,
 Or when a comrade dies,
In whose sweet presence Sorrow dares not lower,
 Nor Expectation rise
Too high for earth; what mother's heart could spare
 To the cold cheerless deep
Her flower and hope? but Thou art with him there,
 Pledge of the untired arm and eye that cannot sleep:

The eye that watches o'er wild Ocean's dead,
 Each in his coral cave,
Fondly as if the green turf wrapt his head
 Fast by his father's grave, -
One moment, and the seeds of life shall spring
 Out of the waste abyss,
And happy warriors triumph with their King
 In worlds without a sea, unchanging orbs of bliss.