I would often at the bark's bows wake

the strait night through, steering

Cold fetters froze my feet

and hunger seared my heart

That man lolling on fair land

has no earthly inkling of how I

a wretched wreck on ice-cold seas

weathered each winter

Hail scoured my skin, and hoar

All I ever heard along the ice-way

was sounding sea, the gannet's shanty

whooper and curlew calls and mewling gull

were all my gaming, mead and mirth

At tempest-tested granite crags

the ice-winged tern would taunt

spray-feathered ospreys overhead

No kinsman near to fend off need

That fine fellow, carefree in his cups

set snugly up in town, cannot conceive

The dark night deepens, northern snow

hardens the soil and hail hits earth

Yet my heart hammers now, yearning anew

wanting the steep salt-water road

longing with lust to roam rough seas, alone

But none on earth may be so proud

so prodigal or yare in youth

nor so express in action

nor smiled on by so mild a master

that he embark with unconcern

He will not heed the harp though

and is not gladdened by gold rings

nor woman's winning ways

and wants no worldly joys

only the rolling oceans urge him on

Then blossom decks the bower's bough

the bothie blooms, the sea meads gleam

the wide world racks the restless mind

of him who on the full flood tide

And heralding his summer hoard of pain

the gowk repeats his plaintive geck

Soft-bedded bloods cannot conceive

what some men suffer as abroad

Reckless of that, my thought is thrown

beyond my heart's cage now. My mind is cast

upon the sea swell, over the whale's world

widely to course creation's coast:

THE summons wails above on wing

it steels the unarmed soul to start

God's visions are to me more vivid

than this dead life loaned out on land

Still three things twist man's mind

until the day his doom is sealed

age, illness or some stroke of hate

Virtue is fallen, visions are faded

the weak are left to hold this world

worn low. The flower of the field is old

the leaf is withered and the laurel sere

Throughout this middle isthmus man

meets age hoar-headed, bleak of face

by former friends forsaken, grieving over

Nor can his sinful soul, quaking before his God

call hoarded gold or mortal glory to his aid

that Architect is awesome

Whose might moves the world

Whose hand has fixed the firmament

Dull is the man that does not dread the Lord

on him will death's descent be sudden

blissful the man that meekly lives

A man should steer a steadfast course

be constant, clean and just in judgement

a man should curb his love or loathing

though flame consume his comrade

and fire the funeral pyre

for fate is set more surely

Come, consider where we have a home, how

we can travel to it, how our travail here

will lead us to the living well-head

Thus let us thank His hallowed name

that He has granted us His grace

Dominion enduring, the Ancient of Days