The fierce sea-sunset over the world
Springs like a wounded spirit,
The waves all day have hissed and hurled
Their fangs and the spray has swept and swirled,
And ships in the gray gale's lair have furled
Their sails — well may they fear it!
The night will be but a monstrous seethe
Of terrors elemental.
The clouds will wrap in a ghastly wreath
Of gloom the winds that in them breathe,
And all that lives in the sea beneath
By fear shall be made gentle;
And sink down, down to the nether deeps,
Below the foam and fretting.
Down where the sullen water sleeps
Alway and the slow sand coldly creeps
Over the lone wreck, which Death keeps
To guard him‘ gainst forgetting.
And there in the ominous vast calm
They'll harbour, like enchanted
Chill shapes he has strangely conjured from
The silence of his masterdom;
There float till again they feel the qualm
Of hunger thro them panted.
And then once more far up will they spring,
To drift and sport and plunder,
Shark, eel and whale and devil-thing,
With tooth to rend and tail to sting.
To the sea, O God, does horror cling
And haunting past all wonder.