But never a roof for shelter And never a sign for guide Rose doubtful or visible: only And hardly and gladly we heard The soft waves whisper and welter, Subdued, and allured to subside, By the mild night's magic: the lonely Sweet silence was soothed, not stirred, By the noiseless noise of the gleaming Glad ripples, that played and sighed, Kissed, laughed, recoiled, and relented, Whispered, flickered, and fled. No season was this for dreaming How oft, with a stormier tide, Had the wrath of the winds been vented On sons of the tribes long dead: The tribes whom time, and the changes Of things, and the stress of doom, Have erased and effaced; forgotten As wrecks or weeds of the shore In sight of the stern hill-ranges That hardly may change their gloom When the fruits of the years wax rotten And the seed of them springs no more. For the dim strait footway dividing The waters that breathed below Led safe to the kindliest of shelters That ever awoke into light: And still in remembrance abiding Broods over the stars that glow And the water that eddies and welters The passionate peace of the night.
All night long, in the world of sleep, Skies and waters were soft and deep: Shadow clothed them, and silence made Soundless music of dream and shade: All above us, the livelong night, Shadow, kindled with sense of light; All around us, the brief night long, Silence, laden with sense of song. Stars and mountains without, we knew, Watched and waited, the soft night through: All unseen, but divined and dear, Thrilled the touch of the sea's breath near: All unheard, but alive like sound, Throbbed the sense of the sea's life round: Round us, near us, in depth and height, Soft as darkness and keen as light.
And the dawn leapt in at my casement: and there, as I rose, at my feet No waves of the landlocked waters, no lake submissive and sweet, Soft slave of the lordly seasons, whose breath may loose it or freeze; But to left and to right and ahead was the ripple whose pulse is the sea's. From the gorge we had travelled by starlight the sunrise, winged and aflame, Shone large on the live wide wavelets that shuddered with joy as it came; As it came and caressed and possessed them, till panting and laughing with light From mountain to mountain the water was kindled and stung to delight. And the grey gaunt heights that embraced and constrained and compelled it were glad, And the rampart of rock, stark naked, that thwarted and barred it, was clad With a stern grey splendour of sunrise: and scarce had I sprung to the sea When the dawn and the water were wedded, the hills and the sky set free. The chain of the night was broken: the waves that embraced me and smiled And flickered and fawned in the sunlight, alive, unafraid, undefiled, Were sweeter to swim in than air, though fulfilled with the mounting morn, Could be for the birds whose triumph rejoiced that a day was born.