Threatening the sky,
Foreign and wild the sea,
Yet all the fleet of fishers are afloat;
They lie
Sails furled
Each frail and tossing boat,
And cast their little nets into an unknown world.
The countless, darting splendours that they miss,
The rare and vital magic of the main,
The which for all their care
They never shall ensnare--
All this
Perchance in dreams they know;
Yet are content
And count the night well spent
If so
The indrawn net contain
The matter of their daily nourishment.
The unseizable sea,
The circumambient grace of Deity,
Where live and move
Unnumbered presences of power and love,
Slips through our finest net:
We draw it up all wet,
A-shimmer with the dew-drops of that deep.
And yet
For all their toil the fishers may not keep
The instant living freshness of the wave;
Its passing benediction cannot give
The mystic meat they crave
That they may live.
But on some stormy night
We, venturing far from home,
And casting our poor trammel to the tide,
Perhaps shall feel it come
Back to the vessel's side,
So easy and so light
A child might lift,
Yet hiding in its mesh the one desired gift;
That living food
Which man for ever seeks to snatch from out the flood.