Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TIDES, by ARTHUR GLYN PRYS-JONES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TIDES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here to the sweep of the shore
Last Line: Shall send to pilot thee.
Subject(s): Death; Sailing & Sailors; Seashore; Tides; Wales; Water; Dead, The; Beach; Coast; Shore; Welshmen; Welshwomen


I

HERE to the sweep of the shore
The changeful waters come—
Now ruthless in uproar,
Now crooningly, now dumb.

To-day on a dawn of spring
They sang at their silver loom,
To-morrow the trembling shore will ring
With pitiless strokes of doom.

What is this ebb and flow—
This ceaseless swing of the sea,
This sounding to and fro
On earth's great organ-key?

Ask of the ships that ride
Or the passionate winds that sweep,
But the laws of the rhythmic tide
Are not for them to keep.

Immutably bound, yet free,
Constant as moon or sun,
Moving to some divine decree,
The world's great waters run.

II

And we that watch and wait
Breathing with mortal breath,
We are but ships upon that sea
Whose tides are birth and death.

Sailing out of the dark,
O little ships, to the light,
And never too small or frail a bark
To sail to the Infinite!

But what of the storms that hide
In that rhythmic mystery?
And what of the bitter, ultimate tide
We neither hear nor see?

Be still, O querulous soul!
He hath charted every sea,
And the Master of all the tides that roll
Shall send to pilot thee.





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