Sea-Change

Wind-flicked and ruddy her young body glowed
In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray;
But when on rippled, silver sand she lay,
And over her the little green waves flowed,
Coldly translucent and moon-coloured showed
Her frail young beauty, as if rapt away
From all the light and laughter of the day
To some twilit, forlorn sea-god's abode.

Again into the sun with happy cry
She leapt alive and sparkling from the sea,
Sprinkling white spray against the hot blue sky,
A laughing girl ... and yet, I see her lie
Under a deeper tide eternally
In cold moon-coloured immortality.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was a British Georgian poet, known for his early association with Rupert Brooke and other poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. His works primarily dealt with the lives of ordinary people and reflected the grim realities of war. He is also recognized for his contribution to the war poetry genre, capturing the human cost of conflict with stark realism and empathy.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Tenants

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Barbara Fell

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Fire

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Quiet

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

English

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Alma Venus

Only a breath - hardly a breath! The shore
Is still a huddled alabaster floor
Of shelving ice and shattered slabs of cold,
Stern wreckage of the fiercely frozen wave,
Gleaming in mailed wastes of white and gold;
As though the sea, in an enchanted grave,
Of fearful crystal locked, no more shall stir
Softly, all lover, to the April moon:
Hardly a breath! yet was I now aware
Of a most delicate balm upon the air,
Almost a voice that almost whispered "soon"!

Not of the earth it was - no living thing
Moves in the iron landscape far or near,
Saving, in raucous flight, the winter crow,
Staining the whiteness with its ebon wing,
Or silver-sailing gull, or 'mid the drear
Rock cedars, like a summer soul astray,
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Wings

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool
Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet
Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set
In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool,
Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir
Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame
To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her
Into my brooding stagnant being came.

And all my senses quickened into life,
Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire
Sang through my singing blood in eager strife
Until through crystal airs we seemed to be
Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire
Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Driftwood

Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames,
Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues,
And all the innumerable ever-changing hues
That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names,
Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight:
And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery,
The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea,
Shines clear before us in the quiet night.

We know the secret that Ulysses sought,
That moonstruck mariners since time began
Snatched at a drowning hazard - -strangely brought
To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars
We chanced to kindle under the cold stars -
The secret in the ocean-heart of man.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Songs Of Love And The Sea

I

When first we met (the Sea and I),
    Like one before a King,
I stood in awe; nor felt nor saw
The sun, the winds, the earth, the sky
    Or any other thing.
    God's Universe, to me,
        Was just the Sea.

When next we met, the lordly Main
    Played but a courtier's part;
Crowned Queen was I; and earth and sky,
And sun and sea were my domain,
    Since love was in my heart.
    Before, beyond, above,
        Was only Love.

II

Love built me, on a little rock,
    A little house of pine,
    At first, the Sea
    Beat angrily
About that house of mine;
(That dear, dear home of mine).

But when it turned to go away
    Beyond the sandy track,
    Down o'er its wall
    The house wou...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Hampton Beach

The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.

On, on, we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Surf Sprite.

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
In hidden caves where monsters creep,
When the sun is high, these spectres sleep:
From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread,
And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead.
Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull,
In the hollow tube and the whitened skull,
They crouch in fear or in whispers wail,
For the lingering night, and the coming gale.
But at even-tide, when the shore is dim,
And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim,
They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze,
And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas.


II.

At summer eve, as I sat on the cliff,
I marked a shape like a dusky skiff,
That skimmed the brine, toward the rock...

Samuel Griswold Goodrich