Classic Poem

He greets you with a smile from friendly eyes,
But never speaks nor rises from his bed:
Beneath the green night of the sea he lies,
The whole world's waters weighing on his head.

The empty wain made slowly over the sand,
And he with hands in pockets by the side
Was trudging, deep in dream, the while he scanned
With blue unseeing eyes the far-off tide,
When, stumbling in a hole, with startled neigh
His young horse reared and, snatching at the rein,
He slipped: the wheels crushed on him as he lay;
Then, tilting over him, the lumbering wain
Turned turtle, as the plunging beast broke free
And made for home; and, pinioned and half-dead,
He lay and listened to the far-off sea
And seemed to hear it surging overhead
Already, though 'twas full an hour or more
Until high-tide when Solway's shining flood
Should sweep the shallow firth from shore to shore.
He felt a salty tingle in his blood
And seemed to stifle, drowning: then again
He knew that he must lie a lingering while
Before the sea might close upon his pain,
Although the advancing waves had scarce a mile
To travel, creeping nearer inch by inch
With little runs and sallies over the sand.
Cooped in the dark, he felt his body flinch
From each cold wave as it drew nearer hand.
He saw the froth of each oncoming crest
And felt the tugging of the ebb and flow
And waves already breaking over his breast—
Though still far-off they murmured faint and low,
Yet creeping nearer inch by inch, and now
He felt the cold drench of the drowning wave
And the salt cold of death on lips and brow,
And sank and sank … while still, as in a grave,
In the close dark beneath the crushing cart
He lay and listened to the far-off sea.
Wave after wave was knocking at his heart
And swishing, swishing, swishing ceaselessly
About the wain—cool waves that never reached
His cracking lips to slake his hell-hot thirst …
Shrill in his ears a startled barn-owl screeched …
He smelt the smell of oil-cake … when there burst
Through the big barn's wide-open door the sea—
The whole sea sweeping on him with a roar …
He clutched a falling rafter dizzily …
Then sank through drowning deeps to rise no more.

Down, ever down, a hundred years he sank
Through cold green death, ten thousand fathom deep.
His fiery lips deep draughts of cold sea drank
That filled his body with strange icy sleep
Until he felt no longer that numb ache,
The dead-weight lifted from his legs at last—
And yet he gazed with wondering eyes awake
Up the green glassy gloom through which he passed,
And saw far overhead the keels of ships
Grow small and smaller, dwindling out of sight,
And watched the bubbles rising from his lips,
And silver salmon swimming in green night,
And queer big golden bream with scarlet fins
And emerald eyes and fiery-flashing tails,
Enormous eels with purple-spotted skins,
And mammoth unknown fish with sapphire scales
That bore down on him with red jaws agape
Like yawning furnaces of blinding heat;
And when it seemed to him as though escape
From those hell-mouths were hopeless, his bare feet
Touched bottom, and he lay down in his place
Among the dreamless legion of the drowned,
The calm of deeps unsounded on his face
And calm within his heart, while all around
Upon the midmost ocean's crystal floor
The naked bodies of dead seamen lay,
Dropped sheer and clean from hubbub brawl and roar
To peace too deep for any tide to sway.
. . . . . . .

The little waves were lapping round the cart
Already when they rescued him from death.
Life cannot touch the quiet of his heart
To joy or sorrow as, with easy breath
And smiling lips, upon his back he lies
And never speaks or rises from his bed,
Gazing through those green glooms with happy eyes
While gold and sapphire fish swim overhead.