I never was on the dull, tame shore

I ’m on the sea! I ’m on the sea! I am where I would ever be, With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoe’er I go.

Touch us gently, Time! Let us glide adown thy stream Gently,—as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream.

The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Song like a rose should be; Each rhyme a petal sweet; For fragrance, melody, That when her lips repeat The words, her heart may know What secret makes them so:—

And also there’s a little star So white a virgin’s it must be:— Perhaps the lamp my love in heaven Hangs out to light the way for me.

O fairest of the feather’d train! For whom I sing, for whom I burn, Attend with pity to my strain, And grant my love a kind return.