The glimmering voice of the sea
Is caught in the shadowed land,
A bird netted; mournfully
It flutters in vain to be free,
It is fluttering hopelessly
Along the edge of sand.

The silver shells of the sea
Agape and hollow roar,
Devils cast up by the sea,
Blinking and silvery
In a moon-white ecstasy
They lie and bellow and roar:

They roar at the glimmering Moon,
They roar for ever afraid
Of the hollow empty world
Where they have been suddenly hurled
Out of the full peace furled
In the dim sea where they were laid.

And the Stranger that walks by the sea,
Watching the bright waves curled
With songs of sweet ecstasy,
With harping and minstrelsy,
With clouds riding silently
Will wander out of the world:

Alone the Moon will hover
Above the glimmering shore,
His soul will be hollowed under
To a conch dinned thin with thunder,
And his body lying asunder
Where the silver shells roar:

His body silvered over
By the Moon and the flowing tide,
And his hair with sea-weed streaming,
And the whites of his eye-balls gleaming,
And a smooth sea sleepily dreaming,
Lapping against his side.