Cycle of Sea Songs

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and multiply and thrive.

Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike, yet all unlike,
Are born without a pang, and die
Without a pang, and so pass by. 

Last night the seawind was to me
A metaphor of liberty,
  And every wave along the beach
A starlit music seemed to be.

To-day the seawind is to me
A fettered soul that would be free,
  And dumbly striving after speech
The tides yearn landward painfully.

To-morrow how shall sound for me
The changing voice of wind and sea?
  What tidings shall be borne of each?
What rumour of what mystery?

By the lone sea shore,
Mournfully beat the waves,
Mournfully evermore,
The wild wind sobs and raves.

A sadness 
And a sense of deep unrest
Brood on the clouds 
And on the waters’ breast.

But lo! the white sea mew* careering,
Float indolently by,
And lo! a snowy sail appearing
Gleams fair against the sky.

The sadness 
And the loneliness depart,
And nature smiles 
With sympathy of heart.

 ... 

                                Old Ocean was
Infinity of ages ere we breathed
Existence—and he will be beautiful
When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that dwells in his stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound
In thund’ring concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive hommage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, Beatific Sea!