Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled. Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred. Let thy clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine. Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form: All the world acclaims thee shifting sail again, and slackening Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm. Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken Here at sunrise never hailed the sun and thee: Turn thee then, and give them comfort, shed like rain and shaken Far as foam that laughs and leaps along the sea. NEAP-TIDE Far off is the sea, and the land is afar: The low banks reach at the sky, Seen hence, and are heavenward high; Though light for the leap of a boy they are, And the far sea late was nigh. The fair wild fields and the circling downs, The bright sweet marshes and meads All glorious with flowerlike weeds, The great grey churches, the sea-washed towns, Recede as a dream recedes. The world draws back, and the world's light wanes, As a dream dies down and is dead; And the clouds and the gleams overhead Change, and change; and the sea remains, A shadow of dreamlike dread. Wild, and woful, and pale, and grey, A shadow of sleepless fear, A corpse with the night for bier, The fairest thing that beholds the day Lies haggard and hopeless here. And the wind's wings, broken and spent, subside; And the dumb waste world is hoar, And strange as the sea the shore; And shadows of shapeless dreams abide Where life may abide no more. A sail to seaward, a sound from shoreward, And the spell were broken that seems To reign in a world of dreams Where vainly the dreamer's feet make forward And vainly the low sky gleams. The sea-forsaken forlorn deep-wrinkled Salt slanting stretches of sand That slope to the seaward hand, Were they fain of the ripples that flashed and twinkled And laughed as they struck the strand? As bells on the reins of the fairies ring The ripples that kissed them rang, The light from the sundawn sprang, And the sweetest of songs that the world may sing Was theirs when the full sea sang.