So my great love for thee lies tranquil, deep, Forever; though above it passions fierce, Ambition, hatred, jealousy; like waves That seem from earth’s core to the sky to leap, But ocean’s depths can never really pierce; Hide its great calm, while all the surface raves.

You stand as rocks stand
to which the sea reaches
in transparent waves of longing;
they are marred, finally;
everything fixed is marred.
And the sea triumphs,
like all that is false,
all that is fluent and womanly.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

There are many things that I want to tell you -- well, really, only one -- but that one is as large as the ocean -- as the ocean is deep and infinite, so is my love for you and it will be for all my life!

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparking sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,
That in some strange way I was strong enough
To keep my love unuttered and to stand
Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night
You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.
Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love
You thought it something delicate and free,
Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,
Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.
Yet in my heart there was a beating storm
Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove
To say too little lest I say too much,
And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame.
Yet when I heard your name the first far time
It seemed like other names to me, and I
Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river
That nears at last its long predestined sea;
And when you spoke to me, I did not know
That to my life’s high altar came its priest.
But now I know between my God and me
You stand forever, nearer God than I,
And in your hands with faith and utter joy
I would that I could lay my woman’s soul.

Oh, my love
To whom I cannot come with any gift
Of body or of soul, I pass and go.
But sometimes when you hear blown back to you
My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,
Know that I sang for you alone to hear,
And that I wondered if the wind would bring
To h

True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love.

Look when the clouds are blowing And all the winds are free:
In fury of their going They fall upon the sea.
But though the blast is frantic, And though the tempest raves,
The deep immense Atlantic Is still beneath the waves.

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

The world doth ever change; there is no peace
Among the shallows of its storm-vexed breast;
With every breath the frothy waves increase,
They toss up mire and dirt, they cannot rest;
I thank Thee that within thy strong-built ark
My soul across the uncertain sea can sail,
And though the night of death be long and dark,
My hopes in Christ shall reach within the veil;
And to the promised haven steady steer,
Whose rest to those who love is ever near.

Huge sea of sorrow, and tempestuous griefe,
Wherein my feeble barke is tossed long,
Far from the hoped hauen of reliefe,
Why doe thy cruel billowes beat so strong,
And thy moyst mountaines each on others throng,
Threatening to swallow vp my fearfull lyfe?

The mountain rill
Seeks with no surer flow the far bright sea,
Than my unchang'd affections flow to thee.

The heavy bridge confines your stream,
Through which the barges toil,
Smoke has shut out the sun's glad beam,
Thy waves have caught the soil.
On—on—though weariness it be,
By shoal and barrier cross'd,
Till thou hast reach'd the mighty sea,
And there art wholly lost.