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Title: In The Water
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne [
More Titles by Swinburne]
The sea is awake, and the sound of the song
of the joy of her waking is rolled
From afar to the star that recedes, from anear
to the wastes of the wild wide shore.
Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward:
if dawn in her east be acold,
From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle
the life that it kindled before,
Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us,
her kisses to bless as of yore?
For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause
in the sky, neither fettered nor free,
Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter
and fain would the twain of us be
Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under
the curve of the deep dawn's dome,
And, full of the morning and fired with the pride
of the glory thereof and the glee,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Life holds not an hour that is better to live in:
the past is a tale that is told,
The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep,
with a blessing in store.
As we give us again to the waters, the rapture
of limbs that the waters enfold
Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby,
though the burden it quits were sore,
Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will
are absorbed in the life they adore--
In the life that endures no burden, and bows not
the forehead, and bends not the knee--
In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven,
in the laws that atone and agree,
In the measureless music of things, in the fervour
of forces that rest or that roam,
That cross and return and reissue, as I
after you and as you after me
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply
the heart of a man may be bold
To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother's
that saith to the son she bore,
Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit
the breath in thy lips from of old?
Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength,
and thy foolishness learn of my lore?
Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not
the might of thy gladness more?
And surely his heart should answer, The light
of the love of my life is in thee.
She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not fairer,
the wind is not blither than she:
From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays
that I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb,
Till now that the twain of us here, in desire
of the dawn and in trust of the sea,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
Friend, earth is a harbour of refuge for winter,
a covert whereunder to flee
When day is the vassal of night, and the strength
of the hosts of her mightier than he;
But here is the presence adored of me, here
my desire is at rest and at home.
There are cliffs to be climbed upon land, there are ways
to be trodden and ridden, but we
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and beseeches, athirst for the foam.
[The end]
Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem: In The Water
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