Ah, yet my youth was old [Str. 1. 
    Its first years dead and cold
    As last year’s autumn’s gold,
And all my spirit of singing sick and sad and sere,
    Or ever I might behold
    The fairest of thy fold
    Engirt, enringed, enrolled,
In all thy flower-sweet flock of islands dear and near.

    Yet in my heart I deemed [Str. 2. 
    The fairest things, meseemed,
    Truth, dreaming, ever dreamed,
Had made mine eyes already like a god’s to see: 
    Of all sea-things that were
    Clothed on with water and air,
    That none could live more fair
Than thy sweet love long since had shown for love to me.

    I knew not, mother of mine, [Ant. 1. 
    That one birth more divine
    Than all births else of thine
That hang like flowers or jewels on thy deep soft breast
    Was left for me to shine
    Above thy girdling line
    Of bright and breathing brine,
To take mine eyes with rapture and my sense with rest.

    That this was left for me, [Ant.2. 
    Mother, to have of thee,
    To touch, to taste, to see,
To feel as fire fulfilling all my blood and breath,
    As wine of living fire
    Keen as the heart’s desire
    That makes the heart its pyre
And on its burning visions burns itself to death.

For here of all thy waters, here of all
Thy windy ways the wildest, and beset
As some beleaguered city’s war-breached wall
With deaths enmeshed all round it in deep net,
Thick sown with rocks deadlier than steel, and fierce
With loud cross-countering currents, where the ship
Flags, flickering like a wind-bewildered leaf,
The densest weft of waves that prow may pierce
Coils round the sharpest warp of shoals that dip
Suddenly, scarce well under for one brief
Keen breathing-space between the streams adverse,
Scarce showing the fanged edge of one hungering lip
Or one tooth lipless of the ravening reef;
And midmost of the murderous water’s web
All round it stretched and spun,
Laughs, reckless of rough tide and raging ebb,
The loveliest thing that shines against the sun.

O flower of all wind-flowers and sea-flowers, [Str. 3. 
  Made lovelier by love of the sea
Than thy golden own field-flowers, or tree-flowers
  Like foam of the sea-facing tree! 
No foot but the seamew’s there settles
  On the spikes of thine anthers like horns,
With snow-coloured spray for thy petals,
    Black rocks for thy thorns.

Was it here, in the waste of his waters, [Ant. 3. 
  That the lordly north wind, when his love
On the fairest of many king’s daughters
  Bore down for a spoil from above,
Chose forth of all farthest far islands
  As a haven to harbour her head,
Of all lowlands on earth and all highlands,
    His bride-worthy bed?