Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow,
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Sand strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep,
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where all the sea beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground,
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine,
Where the great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye.

Once she sat with you and me
On a red-gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the young one sat on her knee.
She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well…
Then down swung the sound of the far-off bell;
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far off sound of a devil’s bell.

The hoarse wind blows colder,
Lights shine in the town;
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.

By threat of the cross,
Imprisoned is she;
Cut off from her children,
The queen of the sea.

We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring tides are low,
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom,
Up the still glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze from the sand-hills
At the white sleeping town,
At the church she’s a captive—
A world upside-down.

By threat of the cross,
Imprisoned is she;
Desolate and weeping,
The queen of the sea.

Abbreviated and adapted from Matthew Arnold