Classic Poem

Where the fishers, rocking, resting,
Or anon the billows breasting,
Feel the pathos of the ocean,
Tossing with a constant motion,
On the tossing sea;

Tang of rhythmic tides inbreathing,
Spume of surges foaming, seething;
Mists that rise to woo the star-drifts
In the clear blue of the cloud-rifts
O'er the mighty sea.

Whether going forth or homing,
In the midnight or the gloaming,
Drawing in the spacious gladness
Of the sunshine, or the sadness
Of the boundless sea;

One they are with all surrounding,
With the angry surf resounding
From the far-off coasts and shallows,
One with all that makes and hallows
Memories of the sea.

Lonely dwellers on the ocean,
Evermore your fine devotion
Lives, in all your sons abiding,
Leavening their souls and guiding
O'er life's fitful sea.

All the ocean's moods and tenses,
Verve and whims and subtle senses,
All its deafening boom and thunder,
All the terror, gloom and wonder
Of the stormful sea;

All the restless moaning, drifting
Mists and shadows, cloud-forms shifting,
Heaving waters, vast, unbounded,
Deep, mysterious, unsounded,
Of the changeful sea,

Builded into soul and sinew
Of the fishers, soothe and win you
With their patience and their power
Born of changeful sun and shower
On the wind-swept sea.

In our nation's many races,
May we never miss the traces
Of the vastness and the wonder,
And the deafening storm and thunder
Of the open sea.