The 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 regions 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 whereso'er I go.
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter ? I shall ride and sleep.
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where ever mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the soutwest wind doth blow!
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 sine 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 !
Barry Cornwall
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