I

  O GREY and desolate Sea!
  I stood by thee in youth,
And drew the strength and beauty that I gave.
Thy purple hues and glory came from me;
  When, like a crown, the aureole of truth
   Circled my brow;
When I looked heavenward beyond the grave,
   And felt the faith I dared avow;
The love and hope that nothing could destroy;
The holiness and rapture of the Boy.

II

  O cold and dreary Sea!
  In the mid-way of life
  I turned in pilgrimage to thee;
The hues I robed thee with, were gone,
The glory that I gave, had shone,
The rapture passed I drew from thy wild strife:
  I saw thee, leaden Ocean! rolled
  Before me like the shrouding fold
  Of destiny, that thee alike controlled;
The eyeless Cyclop feeling thy blind way
Along the rock-ribs of the orbèd world.
   O dark and solemn Sea!
   At eve beside thy shore,
  I stood and heard thy voices wild,
  And felt like a forsaken child,
That in the desert sands hath lost its way,
 The toys, that gladdened once, beheld no more,
  Into the ashes of a past life hurled.
   And then I slowly turned from thee,
   With folded arms and bended knee,
And soul by past and future awed;
   I felt I lived but in the hour;
   But thou the Shadow wert of power;
   The glass of an infinity
That opened upon God.