Poems and Ballads (Third Series)Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon CharlesSwinburne—Vol. III
Or fills thy note's elation

With lordlier exultation

Than man's, whose faint heart sickens

With hopes and fears that blight

Such life as thrills and quickens

The silence of thy flight.

Thy cry from windward clanging

Makes all the cliffs rejoice;

Though storm clothe seas with sorrow,

Thy call salutes the morrow;

While shades of pain seem hanging

Round earth's most rapturous voice,

Thy cry from windward clanging

Makes all the cliffs rejoice.

[Pg 212]

We, sons and sires of seamen,

Whose home is all the sea,

What place man may, we claim it;

But thine—whose thought may name it?

Free birds live higher than freemen,


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