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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, October 1910

The Sea

page 19

The Sea.

The ocean tramp is thrashing through the flying salty spray,
The scudding clouds from southward swiftly northwards made their way;
'Cross the harbor-mouth Pencarrow hears the rollers breaking high,
By the seabirds wheeling landwards knows another storm is nigh—The crashing waves are thumping 'gainst her weather-beaten sides.
Her whirling screw is racing as she pitches on the tides;
But she boldly battles onward through the seas, now foaming white.
Till her battered hull in the falling shades of night.

Below me waves are groaning as they dash upon the shore,
About me winds are howling louder than the breakers'roar:
My restless spirit's troubled with a cloud that will not flee,
How I long to be alone beside the stormy, open sea;
I hate the dingy city, with its fashions and it sin,
I hate its buzz and bustle, and my heart cries out within,
Till I leave it all behind me—seek the lonely, rocky shore,
Where the baulked and reef-barred waves dash high, the Pacific' billows roar.

There the thunder of the rollers gives a peace that few can know,
And the shrieking of the seabirds seems a music soft and low.
To my whare on the seashore calls my heart in times like these,
There from ceaseless toil and troubling my weary spirit flees;
But the restlessness will leave me when the sun come out again,
And I'll be as fresh in spirit as the hills are after rain.
Then I'll hear the city calling back to bustle and to strife,
And I'll mock the whims and fancies that make our little life.

"Quare.'"