The Harbours of England | Page 5

that living fury of waters, to bare its breast, moment after moment, against the unwearied enmity of ocean,--the subtle, fitful, implacable smiting of the black waves, provoking each other on, endlessly, all the infinite march of the Atlantic rolling on behind them to their help,--and still to strike them back into a wreath of smoke and futile foam, and win its way against them, and keep its charge of life from them;--does any other soulless thing do as much as this?
I should not have talked of this feeling of mine about a boat, if I had thought it was mine only; but I believe it to be common to all of us who are not seamen. With the seaman, wonder changes into fellowship and close affection; but to all landsmen, from youth upwards, the boat remains a piece of enchantment; at least unless we entangle our vanity in it, and refine it away into mere lath, giving up all its protective nobleness for pace. With those in whose eyes the perfection of a boat is swift fragility, I have no sympathy. The glory of a boat is, first its steadiness of poise--its assured standing on the clear softness of the abyss; and, after that, so much capacity of progress by oar or sail as shall be consistent with this defiance of the treachery of the sea. And, this being understood, it is very notable how commonly the poets, creating for themselves an ideal of motion, fasten upon the charm of a boat. They do not usually express any desire for wings, or, if they do, it is only in some vague and half-unintended phrase, such as "flit or soar," involving wingedness. Seriously, they are evidently content to let the wings belong to Horse, or Muse, or Angel, rather than to themselves; but they all, somehow or other, express an honest wish for a Spiritual Boat. I will not dwell on poor Shelley's paper navies, and seas of quicksilver, lest we should begin to think evil of boats in general because of that traitorous one in Spezzia Bay; but it is a triumph to find the pastorally minded Wordsworth imagine no other way of visiting the stars than in a boat "no bigger than the crescent moon";[I] and to find Tennyson--although his boating, in an ordinary way, has a very marshy and punt-like character--at last, in his highest inspiration, enter in where the wind began "to sweep a music out of sheet and shroud."[J] But the chief triumph of all is in Dante. He had known all manner of traveling; had been borne through vacancy on the shoulders of chimeras, and lifted through upper heaven in the grasp of its spirits; but yet I do not remember that he ever expresses any positive wish on such matters, except for a boat.
[I] Prologue to Peter Bell.
[J] In Memoriam, ci.
"Guido, I wish that Lapo, thou, and I, Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly With winds at will where'er our thoughts might wend, So that no change nor any evil chance Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be That even satiety should still enhance Between our souls their strict community: And that the bounteous wizard then would place Vanna and Bice, and our Lapo's love, Companions of our wandering, and would grace With passionate talk, wherever we might rove, Our time, and each were as content and free As I believe that thou and I should be."
And of all the descriptions of motion in the Divina Commedia, I do not think there is another quite so fine as that in which Dante has glorified the old fable of Charon by giving a boat also to the bright sea which surrounds the mountain of Purgatory, bearing the redeemed souls to their place of trial; only an angel is now the pilot, and there is no stroke of laboring oar, for his wings are the sails.
"My preceptor silent yet Stood, while the brightness that we first discerned Opened the form of wings: then, when he knew The pilot, cried aloud, 'Down, down; bend low Thy knees; behold God's angel: fold thy hands: Now shalt thou see true ministers indeed. Lo! how all human means he sets at nought; So that nor oar he needs, nor other sail Except his wings, between such distant shores. Lo! how straight up to heaven he holds them reared, Winnowing the air with those eternal plumes, That not like mortal hairs fall off or change.'
"As more and more toward us came, more bright Appeared the bird of God, nor could the eye Endure his splendor near: I mine bent down. He drove ashore in a small bark so swift And light, that in its course no wave it drank. The