Listening

I sat upon a rock at break of day, The waves clove the silence with towering din, And the storm was of water and the sea—it roared and crashed— With a voice of the ages too satisfied again, As the ancient voices call back under the bend, And the sunrise woke wide around my head.

The gulls met the voice and laughed to me there; Their gracious cries now echo and unchime; And boundless sails were thrust and waved in view— Through the murmuring rifts, the sunlight bloom’d— And lo, their dance becomes all light and fine.

The waves crashed renewed like their heavy eyes— And the colors above, they faced me. They glimmer in that seamless part; The black, so ill and sordid shall bid adieu, And come, all of their hold, to drink and star from sea!

• John Masefield