IN TIME OF AWE

The fierce sea-sunset over the world

Springs like a wounded spirit,

The waves all day have hissed and hurled

Their fangs and the spray has swept and swirled,

And ships in the gray gale's lair have furled

Their sails — well may they fear it!

The night will be but a monstrous seethe

Of terrors elemental.

The clouds will wrap in a ghastly wreath

Of gloom the winds that in them breathe,

And all that lives in the sea beneath

By fear shall be made gentle;

And sink down, down to the nether deeps,

Below the foam and fretting.

Down where the sullen water sleeps

Alway and the slow sand coldly creeps

Over the lone wreck, which Death keeps

To guard him‘ gainst forgetting.

And there in the ominous vast calm

They'll harbour, like enchanted

Chill shapes he has strangely conjured from

The silence of his masterdom;

There float till again they feel the qualm

Of hunger thro them panted.

And then once more far up will they spring,

To drift and sport and plunder,

Shark, eel and whale and devil-thing,

With tooth to rend and tail to sting.

To the sea, O God, does horror cling

And haunting past all wonder.