Poems About The Sea By Robert Service

The poet Robert Service is best known for his Klondike Gold rush poetry.

Spending his early years in the Great White Silence, 

he must have spent his later years by the sea.

I really like his two sea poems.

SEA SORCERY

Oh how I love the laughing sea,

Sun lances splintering;

Or with a virile harmony

In salty caves to sing;

Or mumbling pebbles on the shore,

Or roused to monster might:

By day I love the sea, but more

I love it in the night.

High over ocean hangs my home

And when the moon is clear

I stare and stare till fairy foam 

Is music to my ear;

Till glamour dances to a tune

No mortal man could make;

And there bewitched beneath the moon

To beauty I awake.

Then though I seek my bed again

And close the shutters tight,

Still, still I hear that wild refrain

And see that mystic light .  .  .  .

Oh reckon me a crazy loon,

But blessed I would be

If my last seeing be the moon,

My last sound - the sea.

ATOLL 

The woes of men beyond my ken

mean nothing more to me.

Behold my world, and Eden hurled

From Heaven to the Sea;

A jeweled home, in fending foam

Tempestuously tossed;

A virgin isle none dare defile,

Far-flung forgotten, lost.

And here I dwell, where none may tell

Me tales of mortal strife;

Let millions die, immune am I,

And radiant with life.

No echo comes of evil drums,

To vex my dawn divine; 

Aloof, alone I hold my throne, 

And Majesty is mine.

Ghost ships pass by, and glad am I

They make no sign to me.

The green corn springs, the gilt vine clings,

The net is in the sea.

My paradise around me lies,

Remote from wrath and wrong;

My isle is clean, unsought, unseen,

And innocent with song.

Here let me dwell in beauty's spell,

As tranquil as a tree;

Here let me bide, where wind and tide

Bourdon that I am free;

Here let me know from human woe

The Rapture of release:

The rich caress of loveliness,

The plentitude of Peace.