THE SWIMMER'S RACE

Between the clover and the trembling sea

They stand upon the golden-shadowed shore

In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three,

Hearing the breakers’ deep Olympic roar;

Three young athletes poised on a forward limb,

Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand,

Three statues moulded by Praxiteles:

The blue horizon rim

Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land,

And England melts into the skies of Greece.

The dome of heaven is like one drop of dew,

Quivering and clear and cloudless but for one

Crisp bouldered Alpine range that blinds the blue

With snowy gorges glittering to the sun:

Forward the runners lean, with outstretched hand

Waiting the word — ah, how the light relieves

The silken rippling muscles as they start

Spurning the yellow sand,

Then skimming lightlier till the goal receives

The winner, head thrown back and lips apart.

Now at the sea-marge on the sand they lie

At rest for a moment, panting as they breathe,

And gazing upward at the unbounded sky

While the sand nestles round them from beneath;

And in their hands they gather up the gold

And through their fingers let it lazily stream

Over them, dusking all their limbs’ fair white,

Blotting their shape and mould,

Till, mixed into the distant gazer's dream

Of earth and heaven, they seem to sink from sight.

But one, in seeming petulance, oppressed

With heat has cast his brown young body free:

With arms behind his head and heaving breast

He lies and gazes at the cool bright sea;

So young Leander might when in the noon

He panted for the starry eyes of eve

And whispered o'er the waste of wandering waves,

“Hero, bid night come soon!”

Nor knew the nymphs were waiting to receive

And kiss his pale limbs in their cold sea-caves.

Now to their feet they leap and, with a shout,

Plunge through the glittering breakers without fear,

Breast the green-arching billows, and still out,

As if each dreamed the arms of Hero near;

Now like three sunbeams on an emerald crest,

Now like three foam-flakes melting out of sight,

They are blent with all the glory of all the sea;

One with the golden West;

Merged in a myriad waves of mystic light

As life is lost in immortality.