You tasted the brine through the Viking years,
And gazed wide-eyed on the lifting flood,
With the measureless song of the sea in your ears—
Her pulse in your blood.

And now from the corner of this old room
You gaze wide-eyed at the curtain'd wall,
Where the wood-lice tick all day in the gloom,
And the shadows crawl.

Behind that forehead, all brown and scarred,
Do dreams of the wind-mad sea still move?
Dream on, for the harbor mouth still is barred
'Twixt you and your love!