Come , thou old seaman, in my father's ships
Nurtured and blanched, come, take me to the beach,
And, while the white town slumbers in the moon,
Teach me the rudder's governance, and sail's,
And all the dexterous usage of the oar.

For all my heart is with the oars and sails,
And whatsoever stirreth in the deep,
Vessel or fish, or wing of dipping bird,
Or drifted weed, and most of all itself,
The lone vast deep, the lone lamenting deep,
Wherewith no man abideth but the dead;
Therefore it moans, as one itself divides
With desolate surge forlornly from his love.

Thus moaning for my love to comfort me
(My love, ah! I not his, hence all the pang!), —
I stray amid these orchards, like a blast
Upbraiding all the mellow opulence
Of purple-draped Opora. Through the bowers
Rings many a blithesome challenge, and anon,
The ball's fleet bound attains my foot, there rests;
While to the strained ear cleaves the in bended hand,
And feeds it with far music from the sea.

I cannot bear this evil any more,
Teach me, again I pray, the art that comes
Of wrestling with the lithe Protean sea.
Then, some night, while these cliffs and feathery trees
Spread the deep bay with shadow, ere the moon
Surmounts them with her lamp, I will be here,
Stand at the boat's prow, hallow the salt wave
With sacrifice, then with a timorous oar
Wrinkling the liquid darkness, urge myself
Out on the bitter waste of death that hems
My little isle of life, look where I may
For of three things the one, either I find
My Ithacan, my royal mariner,
Safe sceptred with the grey Penelope;
Then will I sue and serve her, spinning out
My heartstrings with her wool, until I die.
Or haply he has perished, and I crowd
Long anguish into momentary death.
Or liker, veers the blast, fills the frail bark,
And o'er it mourns the sorrow of the sea.