Old, old is the sea to-day.
A sudden stealth of age
Has torn away
The texture of its youth and grace,
And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.
Now lines of grey
And dragging vapors on its brow
Heavily are drawn;
And it lies broken as with centuries,
Though yesterday,
Blue-eyed and shadowless as a child's face,
It held the promise of a luminous dawn;
Though through its merry after-hours
It bade the sun to pour
Its flaming mintage on the ocean floor
That by a conjuror's touch was turned
To rarer treasure manifold,
Where jacinth, emerald and sapphire burned--
A fringe around a core of gold....
Old, old is the sea to-day,
Forsaken, chill and grey,
And banished is the glory of its waters;
Though through the silent tenure of the night
It bade the sterile moon to multiply
A thousand-fold its undivided light,
Within the nadir of a richer sky;
When every star a thousand cressets glowed
That, caught in wider conflagration, sent
Vast leagues of silver fire wherever flowed
The waters of its shoreless firmament.
But old and grey
Is the sea to-day,
With the morning colors blanched upon its waters.