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| 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; | 5 |
| Or like a cradled creature lies. | |
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| 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; | 10 |
| If a storm should come and wake the deep, | |
| What matter? I shall ride and sleep. | |
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| I love, O, how I love to ride | |
| On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, | |
| When every mad wave drowns the moon, | 15 |
| Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, | |
| And tells how goeth the world below, | |
| And why the sou’west blasts do blow. | |
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| I never was on the dull, tame shore, | |
| But I loved the great sea more and more, | 20 |
| And backwards flew to her billowy breast, | |
| Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest; | |
| And a mother she was, and is, to me; | |
| For I was born on the open sea! | |
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| The waves were white, and red the morn, | 25 |
| In the noisy hour when I was born; | |
| And 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! | 30 |
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| I ’ve lived since then, in calm and strife, | |
| Full fifty summers, a sailor’s life, | |
| With wealth to spend and a power to range, | |
| But never have sought nor sighed for change; | |
| And Death, whenever he comes to me, | 35 |
| Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea! | |
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