EX-VOTO

When their last hour shall rise

Pale on these mortal eyes,

Herself like one that dies,

And kiss me dying

The cold last kiss, and fold

Close round my limbs her cold

Soft shade as raiment rolled

And leave them lying,

If aught my soul would say

Might move to hear me pray

The birth-god of my day

That he might hearken,

This grace my heart should crave,

To find no landward grave

That worldly springs make brave,

World's winters darken,

Nor grow through gradual hours

The cold blind seed of flowers

Made by new beams and showers

From limbs that moulder,

Nor take my part with earth,

But find for death's new birth

A bed of larger girth,

More chaste and colder.

Not earth's for spring and fall,

Not earth's at heart, not all

Earth's making, though men call

Earth only mother,

Not hers at heart she bare

Me, but thy child, O fair

Sea, and thy brother's care,

The wind thy brother.

Yours was I born, and ye,

The sea-wind and the sea,

Made all my soul in me

A song for ever,

A harp to string and smite

For love's sake of the bright

Wind and the sea's delight,

To fail them never:

Not while on this side death

I hear what either saith

And drink of either's breath

With heart's thanksgiving

That in my veins like wine

Some sharp salt blood of thine,

Some springtide pulse of brine,

Yet leaps up living.

When thy salt lips wellnigh

Sucked in my mouth's last sigh,

Grudged I so much to die

This death as others?

Was it no ease to think

The chalice from whose brink

Fate gave me death to drink

Was thine — my mother's?

Thee too, the all-fostering earth,

Fair as thy fairest birth,

More than thy worthiest worth,

We call, we know thee,

More sweet and just and dread

Than live men highest of head

Or even thy holiest dead

Laid low below thee.

The sunbeam on the sheaf,

The dewfall on the leaf,

All joy, all grace, all grief,

Are thine for giving;

Of thee our loves are born,

Our lives and loves, that mourn

And triumph; tares with corn,

Dead seed with living:

All good and ill things done

In eyeshot of the sun

At last in thee made one

Rest well contented;

All words of all man's breath

And works he doth or saith,

All wholly done to death,

None long lamented.

A slave to sons of thee,

Thou, seeming, yet art free;

But who shall make the sea

Serve even in seeming?

What plough shall bid it bear

Seed to the sun and the air,

Fruit for thy strong sons’ fare,

Fresh wine's foam streaming?

What oldworld son of thine,

Made drunk with death as wine,

Hath drunk the bright sea's brine

With lips of laughter?

Thy blood they drink; but he

Who hath drunken of the sea

Once deeplier than of thee

Shall drink not after.

Of thee thy sons of men

Drink deep, and thirst again;

For wine in feasts, and then

In fields for slaughter;

But thirst shall touch not him

Who hath felt with sense grown dim

Rise, covering lip and limb,

The wan sea's water.

All fire of thirst that aches

The salt sea cools and slakes

More than all springs or lakes,

Freshets or shallows;

Wells where no beam can burn

Through frondage of the fern

That hides from hart and hern

The haunt it hallows.

Peace with all graves on earth

For death or sleep or birth

Be alway, one in worth

One with another;

But when my time shall be,

O mother, O my sea,

Alive or dead, take me,

Me too, my mother.