Sea Pictures op. 37

5. The swimmer

Tekst: Adam Lindsay Gordon

With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam ;
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to nor’ward,
The rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
Waifs wreck’d seaward and wasted shoreward,
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

 

A grim, gray coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men --
Where the batter’d hull and the broken mast lie,
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

 

The skies were fairer, the shores were firmer --
The blue sea over the bright sand roll’d;
Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur,
Sheen of silver and glamour of gold.

 

[ ... ]

 

So girt with tempest and wing’d with thunder,
And clad with lightning and shod with sleet,
And strong winds treading the swift waves under
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on
The sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson,
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun,
That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet.

 

O, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, on your high arch’d manes.
I would ride as never man has ridden
In your sleepy, swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow’d thro strifes forbidden,
Where no light wearies and no love wanes.

 

 

 

xx

De bader

xx

Verlicht door korte, scherpe flitsen
in het zuiden, zo ver het oog reikt
woest turbulente golven hitsen,
in een zee die te kolken lijkt.
Naar het noorden toe alleen klif en rif,
wijkende rotsen en uitspringend klip,
wrakhout, kaoptgesmeten op de kust,
ondiepten van schuimend slib.

 

Grimmig grijs boven een ijselijk kust,
waar zelden voet aan de grond wordt gezet --
waar de stukgeslagen romp en de gebroken mast,
al eeuwenlang diep liggen ingebed.
Liefste! toen wij hier samen liepen, hand in hand,
toen wij hier kwamen op een zonovergoten strand
vanuit de heuvels en dalen door varens en heide:
toen hield God nog zeker van ons beiden.

 

[ . . . ]

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