Off Shore

When the might of the summer

Is most on the sea;

When the days overcome her

With joy but to be,

With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free,

But for hours upon hours

As a thrall she remains

Spell-bound as with flowers

And content in their chains,

And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white manes;

Then only, far under

In the depths of her hold,

Some gleam of its wonder

Man's eye may behold,

Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.

Still deeper and dimmer

And goodlier they glow

For the eyes of the swimmer

Who scans them below

As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and snow.

Soft blossomless frondage

And foliage that gleams

As to prisoners in bondage

The light of their dreams,

The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams.

Not as prisoners entombed

Waxen haggard and wizen,

But consoled and illumed

In the depths of their prison

With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,

From the banks and the beds

Of the waters divine

They lift up their heads

And the flowers of them shine

Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers like wine.

Bright bank over bank

Making glorious the gloom,

Soft rank upon rank,

Strange bloom after bloom,

They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea's womb.

Through the subtle and tangible

Gloom without form,

Their branches, infrangible

Ever of storm

Spread softer their sprays than the shoots of the woodland when April is warm.

As the flight of the thunder, full

Charged with its word,

Dividing the wonderful

Depths like a bird,

Speaks wrath and delight to the heart of the night that exults to have heard,

So swiftly, though soundless

In silence's ear,

Light, winged from the boundless

Blue depths full of cheer,

Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, but hear.

Light, perfect and visible

Godhead of God,

God indivisible,

Lifts but his rod,

And the shadows are scattered in sunder, and darkness is light at his nod.

At the touch of his wand,

At the nod of his head

From the spaces beyond

Where the dawn hath her bed,

Earth, water, and air are transfigured, and rise as one risen from the dead.

He puts forth his hand,

And the mountains are thrilled

To the heart as they stand

In his presence, fulfilled

With his glory that utters his grace upon earth, and her sorrows are stilled.

The moan of her travail

That groans for the light

Till dayspring unravel

The weft of the night,

At the sound of the strings of the music of morning, falls dumb with delight.

He gives forth his word,

And the word that he saith,

Ere well it be heard,

Strikes darkness to death;

For the thought of his heart is the sunrise, and dawn as the sound of his breath.

And the strength of its pulses

That passion makes proud

Confounds and convulses

The depths of the cloud

Of the darkness that heaven was engirt with, divided and rent as a shroud,

As the veil of the shrine

Of the temple of old

When darkness divine

Over noonday was rolled;

So the heart of the night by the pulse of the light is convulsed and controlled.

And the sea's heart, groaning

For glories withdrawn,

And the waves' mouths, moaning

All night for the dawn,

Are uplift as the hearts and the mouths of the singers on leaside and lawn.

And the sound of the quiring

Of all these as one,

Desired and desiring

Till dawn's will be done,

Fills full with delight of them heaven till it burns as the heart of the sun.

Till the waves too inherit

And waters take part

In the sense of the spirit

That breathes from his heart,

And are kindled with music as fire when the lips of the morning part,

With music unheard

In the light of her lips,

In the life-giving word

Of the dewfall that drips

On the grasses of earth, and the wind that enkindles the wings of the ships.

White glories of wings

As of seafaring birds

That flock from the springs

Of the sunrise in herds

With the wind for a herdsman, and hasten or halt at the change of his words.

As the watchword's change

When the wind's note shifts,

And the skies grow strange,

And the white squall drifts

Up sharp from the sea-line, vexing the sea till the low cloud lifts.

At the charge of his word

Bidding pause, bidding haste,

When the ranks are stirred

And the lines displaced,

They scatter as wild swans parting adrift on the wan green waste.

At the hush of his word

In a pause of his breath

When the waters have heard

His will that he saith,

They stand as a flock penned close in its fold for division of death.

As a flock by division

Of death to be thinned,

As the shades in a vision

Of spirits that sinned;

So glimmer their shrouds and their sheetings as clouds on the stream of the wind.

But the sun stands fast,

And the sea burns bright,

And the flight of them past

Is no more than the flight

Of the snow-soft swarm of serene wings poised and afloat in the light.

Like flowers upon flowers

In a festival way

When hours after hours

Shed grace on the day,

White blossomlike butterflies hover and gleam through the snows of the spray.

Like snow-coloured petals

Of blossoms that flee

From storm that unsettles

The flower as the tree

They flutter, a legion of flowers on the wing, through the field of the sea.

Through the furrowless field

Where the foam-blossoms blow

And the secrets are sealed

Of their harvest below

They float in the path of the sunbeams, as flakes or as blossoms of snow.

Till the sea's ways darken,

And the God, withdrawn,

Give ear not or hearken

If prayer on him fawn,

And the sun's self seem but a shadow, the noon as a ghost of the dawn.

No shadow, but rather

God, father of song,

Shew grace to me, Father

God, loved of me long,

That I lose not the light of thy face, that my trust in thee work me not wrong.

While yet I make forward

With face toward thee

Not turned yet in shoreward,

Be thine upon me;

Be thy light on my forehead or ever I turn it again from the sea.

As a kiss on my brow

Be the light of thy grace,

Be thy glance on me now

From the pride of thy place:

As the sign of a sire to a son be the light on my face of thy face.

Thou wast father of olden

Times hailed and adored,

And the sense of thy golden

Great harp's monochord

Was the joy in the soul of the singers that hailed thee for master and lord.

Fair father of all

In thy ways that have trod,

That have risen at thy call,

That have thrilled at thy nod,

Arise, shine, lighten upon me, O sun that we see to be God.

As my soul has been dutiful

Only to thee,

O God most beautiful,

Lighten thou me,

As I swim through the dim long rollers, with eyelids uplift from the sea.

Be praised and adored of us

All in accord,

Father and lord of us

Alway adored,

The slayer and the stayer and the harper, the light of us all and our lord.

At the sound of thy lyre,

At the touch of thy rod,

Air quickens to fire

By the foot of thee trod,

The saviour and healer and singer, the living and visible God.

The years are before thee

As shadows of thee,

As men that adore thee,

As cloudlets that flee:

But thou art the God, and thy kingdom is heaven, and thy shrine is the sea.