thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine

I will go back to the great sweet mother, 

    Mother and lover of men, the sea. 

I will go down to her, I and none other, 

    Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me; 

Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast; 

O fair white mother, in days long past 

Born without sister, born without brother, 

    Set free my soul as thy soul is free. 

 

O fair green-girdled mother of mine, 

    Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, 

Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, 

    Thy large embraces are keen like pain. 

Save me and hide me with all thy waves, 

Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, 

Those pure cold populous graves of thine, 

    Wrought without hand in a world without stain. 

 

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, 

    Change as the winds change, veer in the tide; 

My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, 

    I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; 

Sleep, and now know if she be, if she were, 

Filled full with life to the eyes and hair, 

As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips 

    With splendid summer and perfume and pride. 

 

This woven raiment of nights and days, 

    Were it once cast off and unwound from me, 

Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways, 

    Alive and aware of thy ways and thee; 

Clear of the whole world, hidden at home, 

Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam, 

A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays, 

    A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. 

 

[A.C. Swinburne {1837-1909} from 'The Return', in Poems of the Sea, part of {Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets}]