The sands lay heaved, as heaved by waves, As fashion'd in a thousand graves: And wrecks of storm blown here and there, And dead men scatter'd everywhere; And strangely clad they seem'd to be Just as they sank in that old sea. The mermaid with her splendid hair Had clung about a wreck's beam there; And sung her song of sweet despair, The time she saw the seas withdrawn And all her home and glory gone: Had sung her melancholy dirge, Above the last receding surge, And, looking down the rippled tide, Had sung, and with her song had died. The monsters of the sea lay bound In strange contortions. Coil'd around A mast half heaved above the sand, The great sea-serpent's folds were found, As solid as ship's iron band. And basking in the burning sun There rose the great whale's skeleton. A thousand sea things stretch'd across Their weary and bewilder'd way: Great unnamed monsters wrinkled lay With sunken eyes and shrunken form. The strong sea-horse that rode the storm With mane as light and white as floss, Lay tangled in his mane of moss. And anchor, hull, and cast-away, And all things that the miser deep Doth in his darkling locker keep, To right and left around them lay. Yea, coins lay there on either hand, Lay shining in the silver sand; As plenty in the wide sands lay As stars along the Milky Way. And golden coin, and golden cup, And golden cruse, and golden plate, And all that great seas swallow up, Right in their dreadful pathway lay.... The hungry and insatiate Old sea, made hoary white with time, And wrinkled cross with many a crime, With all his treasured thefts was there, His sins, his very soul laid bare, As if it were the Judgment Day. XXXVII. And now the tawny night fell soon, And there was neither star nor moon; And yet it seem'd it was not night. There fell a phosphorescent light, There rose from white sands and dead men A soft light, white and fair as when The Spirit of Jehovah moved Upon the water's conscious face, And made it His abiding-place. O mighty waters unreproved! Thou deep! where the Jehovah moved Ere soul of man was called to be! O seas! that were created not As man, as earth, as light, as aught That is. O sea! thou art to me A terror, death, eternity. XXXVIII. I do recall some sad days spent, By borders of the Orient, Days sweet as sad to memory ... 'Twould make a tale. It matters not ... I sought the loneliest seas; I sought The solitude of ruins, and forgot Mine own lone life and littleness Before this fair land's mute distress, That sat within this changeful sea.