THE sea is brown and green, and silver-flecked,
And roars as mountain-shadowed forests do.
The sky's grey velvet in the wind is checked
With pleats of pallid azure and deep blue.
A beacon-light is virginally paling
A cloud of barques to all horizons sailing,
And into their black sails the ambushed squall
Shoots silver arrows from his iron bow.

But when the sun is hatted with the squall,
And blearily above the ocean leers,
And when the cliff casts down the autumn's pall
Which, laughing, weeping, to the sun careers,
Thou, poet-fisherman, dost haste to bring
To the earth's shelter all thy mesh of string,
And waitest, dreaming, for the sovran cloud
To draw the rainbow from its velvet shroud.

translated by Jethro Bithell