Sea Voices

The Poet walks the shining sand.
     Hearing the low melodious beat
     As of a million dancing feet
Of sea-nymphs hurrying to the land, 
     And gush of liquid laughters sweet;
The music of their wheeling band.

A dawning smile, an inner light,
     On ruddy lip and deep-blue eye,
     Breaks, like the day on shore and sky 
From luminous deeps beyond our sight!
     The joyous sea birds wheeling by 
Not gladder than his fancies' flight.

But yonder, where a granite cliff 
     Clenches a black, defiant flat 
     Against the Titan agonist,
The mad lips, whitening, growl as if
     Revenge were in the curdling mist
Blown off with every passionate whiff.

A stormy joy, the exultant mood 
     Of warriors in the battle's roar,
     Uplifts the wanderer on the shore;
The heart beats strong with fiery blood, 
     The billows vibrate to its core,
And give to sea and soul one flood.

See now the waking dreamer, prone 
     Against the brown cliff’s granite knee
     With all the voices of the sea
In one melodious monotone, 
     Singing a solemn threnody,—
The murmur of life's infinite moan. 

O, many voiced! with meanings clear —
     Since every symbol utters soul,
     Lend in thy anthem’s thunder-coil,
Low in thy whispering foam, I hear
     The living God—who lays his whole
Creation to the listening ear
Magnificent Telephone, reverberant everywhere.