Ay, artists come to paint it; and writers to put in a book,
How grand in storm, and fair in calm, the old North Sea can look.

I've wondered to hear them talking, how to mimic in music or song,
The voice that thrills the brooding air with its thunder low and long;

Since never aught but itself, I wot, could sound like its angry roar,
When its breakers rise to the east winds' call, to crash on the rocky shore.

But rough or smooth, in shade or shine, the face of the mighty main
Can speak of little else to me, but memory, fear or pain.

Father and husband, and bold, bright boy, it has taken them one by one;
I shall lie alone in the churchyard there, when my weary days are done.

God never sent me a maiden bairn, to stay by me to the last,
So I sit by the restless tides alone, by the grave of all my past;

By the waves so strong and pitiless, that have drowned life's joy for me,
And think of "the land where all shall meet, the land where is no more sea."

Yet I cannot rest in meadow or fell, or the quiet inland lanes,
Where the great trees spread their rustling arms over the smiling plains.

I can't draw breath in the country, all shadowed, and green and dumb,
The want of the sea is at my heart, I hear it calling, "Come."

I hearken, and rise and follow; perhaps my men down there,
Where the bright shells gleam, and the fishes dart 'mid seaweeds' tangles fair,

Will find me best, if still on earth, when the angel's trump is blown,
On the sand-reach, or the tall cliff-side, ere we pass to the great white throne.

So summer and winter, all alone, by the breaker's lip I wait,
Till I see the red light flush the clouds, as He opens the golden gate;

And though at the sound of the rising waves I ofttimes tremble and weep,
When the air is void of their glorious voice I can neither rest nor sleep.

And the strangest of all the promises writ in the Book, to me,
Is how on the shores of Paradise, "there shall be no more sea."

When Death from some fair face
⁠Is stealing life away,
All weep save she the grace
⁠That earth must lose to-day.

When Time from some fair face
⁠Steals beauty year by year;
For her slow-fading grace
⁠Who gives save she a tear?

Yet Death not often dares
⁠To wake the world's distress,
While Time, the cunning, mars
⁠Surely all loveliness.

And though by breath and breath,
⁠Fades all our fairest prime;
Men shrink from cruel Death,
⁠But honor crafty Time.

⁠While Time, the cunning, mars
⁠Surely all loveliness.

The sculptor's chisel mars
⁠The marble's spotless snow;
But by those cruel scars
⁠New loveliness doth grow.

A form of ideal grace
⁠Slept in the smooth white stone;
The steel's relentless-trace,
⁠That nobler charm has won.

Time's chisels, hard and stern,
⁠May youthful beauty slay;
But beauty they return
⁠More perfect every way.

We cared not for the stone,
⁠Nor for its faultless white;
But on the statue grown,
⁠We gaze in fixed delight.