To the Sea

To the Sea

                O grey wild sea,
Thou hast a message, thunderer, for me.
                Their huge wide backs
Thy monstrous billows raise, abysmal cracks
                Dug deep between.
One pale boat flutters over them, hardly seen.
                I hear thy roar
Call me, "Why dost thou linger on the shore
                With fearful eyes
Watching my tops visit their foam-washed skies?
                This trivial boat
Dares my vast battering billows and can float.
                Death if it find,
Are there not many thousands left behind?
                Dare my wide roar,
Nor cling like cowards to the easy shore.

                Come down and know
What rapture lives in danger and o'erthrow."
                Yes, thou great sea,
I am more mighty and outbillow thee.
                On thy tops I rise;
'Tis an excuse to dally with the skies.
                I sink below
The bottom of the clamorous world to know.
                On the safe land
To linger is to lose what God has planned
                For man's wide soul,
Who set eternal godhead for its goal.
                Therefore He arrayed
Danger and difficulty like seas and made
                Pain and defeat,
And put His giant snares around our feet.
                The cloud He informs
With thunder and assails us with His storms,
                That man may grow
King over pain and victor of o'erthrow
                Matching his great
Unconquerable soul with adverse Fate.
                Take me, be
My way to climb the heavens, thou rude great sea.
                I will seize thy mane,
O lion, I will tame thee and disdain;
                Or else below
Into thy salt abysmal caverns go,
                Receive thy weight
Upon me and be stubborn as my Fate.
                I come, O Sea,
To measure my enormous self with thee.