With the gulls' hysteria above me I walked near these breakneck seas This morning of mists, and saw them, Tall the mysterious queens Waltzing in on the broad Ballroom of the Atlantic. All veils and waterfalls and Wailings of the distraught, These effigies of grief moved Like refugees over the water; The icy empresses of the Atlantic Rising to bring me omen. These women woven of ocean And sorrows, these far sea figures, With the fish and skull in their Vapour of faces, the icicles Salting down from their eyelashes, As I walked by the foreshore Moved towards me, ululating: O dragnet of the sweet heart Bind us no longer! The cage Bursts with passions and bones, And every highspirited fish Lives off our scuttled love! I stood on a stone, the gulls Crossed my vision with wings And my hearing with caterwauling; The hurdling wave, backbroken, Died at my feet. Taller Than the towering hour above me The homing empresses of the sea Came among me. And, shivering, I felt death nuzzling in the nest Of the diurnally shipwrecked Drowned nocturnally breast. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA: 4. THE LOTTERY GIRL by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON THE YOUNG MYSTIC by LOUIS UNTERMEYER SILVER by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE APOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEO by WILFRED OWEN A CHILD TO HIS SICK GRANDFATHER by JOANNA BAILLIE IMPULSIVE DIALOGUE by MAXWELL BODENHEIM THE ORGANIST IN HEAVEN (SAMUEL SEBASTIAN WESLEY) by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN |