Ontario Readers Third Book, The

<h2><SPAN name="Sea" id="Sea"></SPAN>A SONG OF THE SEA</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span>The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!<br/></span> <span>The blue, the fresh, the ever free!<br/></span> <span>Without a mark, without a bound,<br/></span> <span>It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round;<br/></span> <span>It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;<br/></span> <span>Or like a cradled creature lies.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea!<br/></span> <span>I am where I would ever be;<br/></span> <span>With the blue above, and the blue below,<br/></span> <span>And silence wheresoe'er I go;<br/></span> <span>If a storm should come and awake the deep,<br/></span> <span>What matter? <em>I</em> shall ride and sleep.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>I love (oh! <em>how</em> I love) to ride<br/></span> <span>On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,<br/></span> <span>When every mad wave drowns the moon,<br/></span> <span>Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,<br/></span> <span>And tells how goeth the world below,<br/></span> <span>And why the south-west blasts do blow.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>I never was on the dull, tame shore,<br/></span> <span>But I loved the great Sea more and more,<br/></span> <span>And backwards flew to her billowy breast,<br/></span> <span>Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;<br/></span> <span>And a mother she <em>was</em> and <em>is</em> to me;<br/></span> <span>For I was born on the open Sea.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>The waves were white, and red the morn,<br/></span> <span>In the noisy hour when I was born;<br/></span> <span>And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled<br/></span> <span>And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;<br/></span> <span>And never was heard such an outcry wild<br/></span> <span>As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span>I've lived since then, in calm and strife,<br/></span> <span>Full fifty summers a sailor's life,<br/></span> <span>With wealth to spend, and a power to range,<br/></span> <span>But never have sought nor sighed for change;<br/></span> <span>And Death whenever he comes to me,<br/></span> <span>Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!<br/></span></div> </div> <p class="citation"><span class="smcap">B.&nbsp;W. Procter</span>: ("Barry Cornwall")</p> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />