Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SUNLIGHT AND SEA, by ALFRED NOYES Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Give me the sunlight and the sea Last Line: And who shall take my heaven from me? Subject(s): Breath; Death; Eyes; Faces; Heaven; Life; Sea; Singing & Singers; Spring; Sun; Dead, The; Paradise; Ocean | ||||||||
GIVE me the sunlight and the sea And who shall take my heaven from me? Light of the Sun, Life of the Sun, O happy, bold companion, Whose golden laughters round me run, Making wine of the blue air With wild-rose kisses everywhere, Browning the limb, flushing the cheek, Apple-fragrant, leopard-sleek, Dancing from thy red-curtained East Like a Nautch-girl to my feast, Proud because her lord, the Spring, Praised the way those anklets ring; Or wandering like a white Greek maid Leaf-dappled through the dancing shade, Where many a green-veined leaf imprints Breast and limb with emerald tints, That softly net her silken shape But let the splendour still escape, While rosy ghosts of roses flow Over the supple rose and snow. But sweetest, fairest is thy face, When we meet, when we embrace, Where the white sand sleeps at noon Round that lonely blue lagoon, Fringed with one white reef of coral Where the sea-birds faintly quarrel And the breakers on the reef Fade into a dream of grief, And the palm-trees overhead Whisper that all grief is dead. Sister Sunlight, lead me then Into thy healing seas again . . . For when we swim out, side by side, Like a lover with his bride, When thy lips are salt with brine, And thy wild eyes flash in mine, The music of a mightier sea Beats with my blood in harmony. I breast the primal flood of being, Too clear for speech, too near for seeing; And to his heart, new reconciled, The Eternal takes his earth-bound child. Who the essential secret spells In those gigantic syllables, -- Flowing, ebbing, ebbing, flowing, -- Gathers wisdom past all knowing. Song of the Sea, I hear, I hear, That deeper music of the sphere, Catch the rhythm of sun and star, And know what light and darkness are; Ay, faint beginnings of a rhyme That swells beyond the tides of time; Beat with thy rhythm in blood and breath, And make one song of life and death. I hear, I hear, and rest content, Merged in the primal element, The old element whence life arose, The fount of youth, to which it goes. Give me the sunlight and the sea And who shall take my heaven from me? | 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 MOUNTAIN LAUREL by ALFRED NOYES |
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