46

The Sea, the Sea, the Open Sea!

THE sea, the sea, the open sea,
The blue, the fresh, the ever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide region round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies.
Or like a cradled creature lies;
I'm on the sea, I'm on the sea,
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, oh, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the south-west wind doth blow:

47

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,
As welcomed to life the ocean child;
I have lived, since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a rover's life,
With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change;
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea.