Sweep unrest

      Out of my blood,

      Winds of the sea! Sweep the fog

      Out of my brain

      For I am one

      Who has told Life he will be free.

      Who will not doubt of work that's done,

      Who will not fear the work to do,

      Who will hold peaks Promethean

      Better than all Jove's honey-dew.

      Who when the Vulture tears his breast

      Will smile into the Terror's Eyes.

      Who for the World has this Bequest —

      Hope, that eternally is wise.

      I know your heart, O Sea!

      You are tossed with cold desire to flood earth utterly;

      You run at the cliffs, you fling wild billows at beaches,

      You reach at islands with fingers of foam to crumble them;

      Yes, even at mountain tops you shout your purpose

      Of making the earth a shoreless circle of waters!

      I know your surging heart!

      Tides mighty and all-contemptuous rise within it,

      Tides spurred by the wind to champ and charge and thunder —

      Tho the sun and moon rein them —

      At the troubling land, the breeding-place of mortals,

      Of men who are ever transmuting life to spirit,

      And ever taking your salt to savor their tears.

      I know your tides, I know them!

      "Down," they rage, "with the questing of men, and crying!

      With their continents – cradles of grief and despair!

      Better entombing waters for them, better our deeps unfathomed,

      Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death toll-less for all,

      And where dark ooze enshrouds past resurrection!"

      Ah, yes, I know your heart!

      I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to reveal you,

      I have watched it foam at ships that sought to defy you,

      I have seen it straining at cables that cross you, bearing whispers hid to you,

      Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your hurricanes.

      I know, I know your heart!

      Men you will sink, and shores will sink; but a shore shall be man's forever,

      From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal the Infinite,

      Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing their unknown burden

      To a Port which only eternity shall determine!

      Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea

      And furl your wings.

      The bay is gray with the twilit spray

      And the loud surf springs.

      The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands

      Of all the drowned,

      Who know the woe of the wind and tow

      Of the tides around.

      Go in, go in! Oh, haste from the sea,

      And let them rest —

      The throng who long for the air – still long,

      But are still unblest.

      Aye, even as I, whose hands at the bell

      Now labour most.

      The tomb has gloom, but oh, the doom

      Of the drear sea-ghost!

      He evermore must wander the ooze

      Beneath the wave,

      Forlorn – to warn of the tempest born,

      And to save – to save!

      Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,

      For only so

      Can peace release us and give us ease

      Of our salty woe.

      One ruby, amid a diamond spray of stars,

      The coast light flashes;

      The tide plashes,

      Across a mile of bay-sweet land the moon

      Comes soon:

      She has lost half of her lustre and looks old.

      A cricket, finitude's incarnate cry,

      And the infinite waters with their hushless sigh

      Are the two sounds

      The night has:

      Each in eternal wistfulness abounds.

      I have wakened out of my sleep because I too

      Am wistful,

      Tristeful;

      Because I know that half of me is gone,

      And that all frailty cries in the cricket's tone.

      I have wakened out of my sleep to watch and listen.

      For what?

      To see for a moment universes glisten;

      To wonder and want – and go to sleep again,

      And die,

      And be forgot.

      No, no, my friend; there is an agony

      Not to be exorcised out of the world

      By any voice of hope. – But, I will tell you.

      The Sonia was sailing without lights —

      Bearing three hundred souls