Hymn to the Sea[1]
By William Watson
I
Grant, O regal in bounty, a subtle and delicate largess;
Grant an ethereal alms, out of the wealth of thy soul:
Suffer a tarrying minstrel, who finds and not fashions his numbers,—
Who, from the commune of air, cages the volatile song,—
Here to capture and prison some fugitive breath of thy descant,
Thine and his own as thy roar lisped on the lips of a shell,
Now while the vernal impulsion makes lyrical all that hath language,
While, through the veins of the Earth, riots the ichor of Spring,
While,
- ↑ Copyright in America by John Lane.
