As one, at midnight wakened by the call
Of golden plovers in their seaward flight,
Who lies and listens as the clear notes fall
Through tingling quiet of the frosty night,
Who lies and listens as the wild notes fail,
And then, in fancy following the flock,
Fares over slumbering hill and dreaming dale,
Until he hears the surf on reef and rock
Break thundering, and all sense of self is drowned
Within the mightier music of the deep,
And he no more recalls the piping sound
That startled him from dull undreaming sleep—
So I, first waking from oblivion, heard,
With heart that kindled to the call of song,
The voice of young life fluting like a bird,
And echoed that wild piping till, ere long,
Lured onward by that happy singing-flight,
I caught the stormy summons of the sea
Through whose unresting conflict day and night
Surges the dauntless human harmony.