Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO THER SEA, by GEORGE CABOT LODGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO THER SEA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lure me, o musical motions of the sea
Last Line: Lost in the daybreak shall return no more!
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean


Lure me, O musical motions of the sea,
Thou of the cosmic heart most mighty mood!
And breathe beside me once again, O ye
Intimate whispers of the outlawed wind!
And grant, O Earth of long maternity,
While dawn grows golden like an infant God
Who walks the young world's twilight nude and free,
Thy latest child the rest he cannot find!

Still as I sought thee soul and flesh were fain!
Before the flower of sunset, one by one,
Scattered its petals like a golden rain,
Before the twilight clear as amethyst
Covered my lidless eyes, within my brain
Seemed, in the lasting silence of the sun,
All life as interludes of uttered pain
That scar the lips of Heaven's mute Agonist!

I am the heir to Time's exceeding dower:
Ease me, thou minstrel of the changeless theme!
Now while the midnight yields the mystic flower
Of moondawn, violent as a sanguine stain,
Like love's desire that in night's loneliest hour
Dawns thro' the empty twilight of a dream,
Mend with thy music-threads of faith and power
Life's raiment ruinous with surmise and pain!

Moon-like the motion of thy rhythmic cries
Has lured how many a sea of tears to flood!
How many a time thy sacramental sighs,
Swelling the daedal veins of silence, bring,
In eastern chambers where the darkness dies,
Thro' Death's half-fallen veil of solitude,
Desirous tears, sad eucharist of eyes
Last opening over earth's essential spring!

Soon shalt thou feel the miracle of light
Soft as the distant music of a shell;
Thy voice that creeps around the world tonight
Breathes from long vistas of deciduous years,
Since first thy bitter waters void of sight,
Sterile of seasons, on earth's valleys fell
As fall like darkness in the soul the bright
Burden of life's insuperable tears!

Soothe me! For when the sundawn gilds thy tide,
Poised like love's lotos on life's perilous stream,
When flower by flower the earth grows open-eyed,
Almost I would to God my soul were drawn
Where body and soul seem nearly to divide,
Till, lapsed from life's dark labyrinth of dream,
I ceased in darker solitudes and wide
Eventual silence of the ripening dawn.

Louder than cymbals, on thy silver breast
The gold of sunrise falls -- our loneliness
Ends with the shadows and the vain unrest
Of life returns like long-familiar pain.
Grant me the soul's deep truth thy voice expressed,
The power to live in human tenderness,
Yea! tho' I pass, repass, and never rest
Still bound to life and death's immortal chain!

Then shall the seas of soul be like to thine,
Endless in stately vistas drowned in sun;
Then shall I take thy perilous call for sign,
Then shall I leave the world's familiar shore
Seizing the soul's inheritance for mine;
Then, while the huge horizons merge to one
All-welcoming sphere, O then the Ship Divine
Lost in the daybreak shall return no more!






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