swinburne

Lines from ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE


It swells and welters and swings,
The pulse of the tide of the sea.


Let the wind shake our flag like a feather,
Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!


The sea gives her shells to the shingle,
The earth gives her streams to the sea.


The wave’s wing spreads and flutters,
The wave’s heart swells and breaks.


I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.


A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.


I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.


Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past.


Blow thy horn here for us,
Blow the sky clear for us,
Send us the song of the sea to hear.


Sea-tide and river,
And waves that shiver.


Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.


The twilight hangs half starless: half the sea
Still quivers.


At the sea’s heart all her wrecks lie waste,
Lie deeper than the sea.