The Whispering Waves Charles Wood

Now the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as thou
The loveliest and the last, is dead:
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up -- to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled
For now the earth has changed its face
A frown is on the heaven's brow

We wander'd to the Pine Forest
That skirts the ocean's foam
The lightest wind was in its nest
The tempest in its home;
The whispering waves were half asleep
The clouds were gone to play
And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of heaven lay:
It seem'd as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter'd from above the sun
A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced, --
And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath
As tender as its own
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be