No, no. The voice borne faint athwart the gloomy
air from the realms of ice, like human cries,
was but the petrel’s screech,
that loves the lonely rocks, the storms
unheard. Or maybe (was it not like children’s
wailing?) maybe the sea-gull’s.
A sound uplifts itself of wailful limboes
far in remotest shade untrodden:
that is the gulls, they say. Or divers, maybe?
Or the skua? Perhaps the skua—for when it flies
above the icefields, from a thousand nests
rises a strident cry; since with it draws a-near
Death’s self. Or was’t vain voiceless crying
in thine own heart? Nay, but the look-out heard them;
and in the look-out’s ear thou trustest.
Yea, but ’twas, sure, the roar of breakers,
crashing of rocks, howling of wind, the pant
of storms far off, yet nearing,
the sky, the sea, oh Norman seafarer!