Algy perched on a rock beside the edge of the mighty ocean, and thought of all his friends who were feeling fed up or exhausted or ill at this very low point in the northern year. The waves washed around him with their “eternal whisperings” and – remembering the poem by Keats – he hoped that it might help his friends to feast their eyes upon “the wideness of the sea”:

         It keeps eternal whisperings around
              Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
              Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
          Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
          Often ‘tis in such gentle temper found,
              That scarcely will the very smallest shell
              Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
          When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
          Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
              Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
                  Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
              Or fed too much with cloying melody, –
                  Sit ye near some old cavern’s mouth, and brood
          Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

[Algy is quoting the poem On the Sea by John Keats.]

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