Marie Šechtlová

Beatific, 1962

Nayyirah Waheed

    If
    the ocean
    can calm itself,
    so can you.
    We
    are both
    salt water
    mixed with
    air.

— Meditation

Herbert List

At the Mediterranean Sea, Liguria, 1936

Dejan Stojanović

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

—  from The Shape

Anne Brigman

The Water Nixie, 1914

Nizar Qabbani

    In the summer
    I stretch out on the shore
    And think of you     
    Had I told the sea
    What I felt for you,
    It would have left its shores,
    Its shells,
    Its fish,
    And followed me.

― In the summer, tradução de B. Frangieh e C. Brown 

Elliott Erwitt

Alemanha, Schleswig-Holstein, Ilha de Sylt, 1968

Richard Wilbur

All that we do
Is touched with ocean, yet we remain
On the shore of what we know.

— For Dudley

Bo Bartlett

Leviathan, 2000

Jan Heller Levi

But I always thought I was drowning
in that icy ocean between us,
I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,
when you were moving as fast as you can.

— Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad in Once I Gazed at You in Wonder

Herbert James Draper

The Foam Sprite

Kenneth Rexroth

Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.

— The Love Poems of Marichiko: VII

Aurel Bauh

Les trois Grâces, ca.1938

W. H. Auden

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,
 
I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky. 

— As I Walked Out One Evening, 1940

Andreas Feininger

Nude,1933

Byron

Where rose the mountains, there to him were frien
Where rolled the ocean, there on was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam.

— Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1812-18

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

— Tales of a Wayside Inn: The Theologian’s Tale, Elizabeth, 1874