THE SONGS OF THE SEA
Of what doth the sea sing? Its breath exhales
The story of the whole universe!
Every bubble of its wavy self
Reveals kinship with the sun, moon, and stars.
It kisses the sky's vapour from the air,
Fishes and plants in its womb praise the skies;
Its garments are the gifts from light and clouds,
The blue deeps are thus tinged purple, dark, green;
Minerals and salts does the land help it with,
The sea's returns are but the soils dissolved.
To the sea the rivers bring the spirit
Of thousands of villages and cities;
Of what else can the lord of rivers sing
But of the life that men and women live?
All the forces are concentrated here,
Sweet and terrible, bright and dark, life and death;
From this reservoir of unnumbered gems
A message of unending strength does rise;
The boundless ocean with its trumpet call
Is the perennial energy's bard.
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