On the sea this sense of remoteness and strangeness comes
oftener than in the presence of any other natural form; even the
mountains make sheltered places for our thought at their feet, or along
their precipitous ledges; but the sea makes no concessions to our human
weakness, and leaves the message which it intones with the voice of
tempest and the roar of surge without an interpreter. Men have come to
it in all ages, full of a passionate desire to catch its meaning and
enter into its secret, but the thought of the boldest of them has only
skirted its shores, and the vast sweep of untamed waters remains as on
the first day. Homer has given us the song of the landlocked sea, but
where has the ocean found a human voice that is not lost and forgotten
when it speaks to us in its own penetrating tones? The mountains stand
revealed in more than one interpretation, touched by their own
sublimity, but the sea remains silent in human speech, because no voice
will ever be strong enough to match its awful monody.
It is because the sea preserves its secret that it sways our
imagination so royally, and holds us by an influence which never
loosens its grasp. Again and again we return to it, spent and worn,
and it refills the cup of vitality; there is life enough and to spare
in its invisible and inexhaustible chambers to reclothe the continents
with verdure, and recreate the shattered strength of man.
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