Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SEA DREAM, by WILLIAM ROSE BENET Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Tonight the loud waters, the loud and crying waters Last Line: Cities, sea-dreaming through the night! Subject(s): Mermaids & Mermen; Sea; Silence; Water; Waves; Ocean | ||||||||
To-night the loud waters, the loud and crying waters, the wild and silvered waters of the sea are in my mind, Their booming and their thundering on sands the waves are plundering, the high foaming combers in charging ranks aligned. I strip on the shingle and I race to the kiss of them, the cold beryl welter of wave on swelling wave, The desperate rush and hiss of them, the drenching, blinding bliss of them, the kingly, roaring waters, so strong my soul to save! Oh, high along the sands, where nods not any flower, the silver, crumbling moon lights the silver webs they spread! With passion, with power she sways their splendid hour, and a man's heart leaps to meet them, as quickened from the dead. I slough the gray, ungracious and soiled and tattered seeming of the might that was my mind. Now, oh, better far to be At dawn afloat and dreaming where the sea-birds waken screaming on the green- gleaming rollers far out, far out at sea! For there is deep silence from all the wrangling voices, and there is clean rapture undaunted by desire, Where the world swings and poises, and the flashing blue rejoices, and, misty on the sea-line, some foreland glints with fire, With fire aripple round me, as the magic sun and blinding sweeps high through mists of rose, and the smell of dawn grows keen. Time's mills, for their grinding, must wait upon my finding, ere I return to cities to sing what I have seen! To sing of the faces that meet the midnight swimmer who breasts the billow strongly through silver sequins bright, Till moonbeams filter dimmer, and white the faces glimmer of mermen and mermaids around him in the night, With conch-shells spumy-blowing and moonshine tresses flowing, and green eyes, and gray eyes, and lips like coral wet, All gleaming and glowing, and seines phantasmal throwing to maze the breathing human in many a ghostly net; To sing of that spirit who brings the breeze ere dawning; a cloud-enfolded angel, a flash of jewelled wings; Who clears night's sable awning from waves that shudder fawning to heel, like hounds that scuffle about the feet of kings; To sing of haunted waters, of sacred, moon-drenched waters, the gold of morning waters,that fade away in light. ... For walls are still around me. The dawn hath only found me a thrall to iron cities, sea-dreaming through the night! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HALL OF OCEAN LIFE by JOHN HOLLANDER JULY FOURTH BY THE OCEAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE FIGUREHEAD by LEONIE ADAMS THE FALCONER OF GOD by WILLIAM ROSE BENET |
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