Beautiful Pacific! Queen of every ocean!
Grasping earth's proud continents in thine outstretched arms,
Loud thy royal music-bands, in their deep commotion,
Swell their notes of harmony, to praise thy queenly charms.
Where thy train of purple sweeps the far horizon
Fringed with sunset-amber, sprinkled o'er with gold,
Where the Orient rainbow doth thy crown emblazon,
Monarchs awed before thee, do thy power behold.
Tread'st there another where thy jewels brighten
All thy mystic palace with its secret crypts?
Readest there another, the strange history written
In whose well of knowledge, science vainly dips?
With their snowy turbans sparkling in the glamour
Of the golden sunshine, surge the orchestra;
But though for thy captives, nations vainly clamor,
Deep and mighty music drowns thy mystery;
Thou hast hid thy captives in the deep recesses
Where no footfall echoes, but thy regal tread;
Where the sailor's pallid form his couch of sea-weed presses
And the rash explorer makes his lowly bed;
There the strong ship's anchor, wound in tangled cables
Rusts amid her ruin, in darkness and debris,
Where the ghastly skeleton mocks the idle fables
Sung in playful measure by the blue waves of the bay.
Queen of every ocean, beautiful Pacific!
Every sportive wave of thine is armed a cruel foe,
Terrible in anger, in kindly mood seraphic,
Store-house of prosperity and charnel-house of woe.
Nature's mighty forces crowned thy jeweled tresses,
With a grandeur crown than ever mortal monarch wore,
Thou who spite thy ravage, each country more than blesses
Where thy dark blue breakers beat against the shore.
