WHEN I loose my vessel's moorings, and put out to sea once more
On the last and longest voyage that shall never reach the shore,
O Thou Master of the Ocean, send no tranquil tides to me,
But 'mid all Thy floods and thunders let my vessel put to sea.
Let her lie within no tropic sea, dead rotten to the bone,
Till the lisping, sluggish waters claim my vessel for their own;
Till the sun shall scar her timbers, and the slimy weed shall crawl
O'er her planks that gape and widen, and the slow sea swallow all.
Let her not go down in darkness, where the smoking mist-wreaths hide
The white signal of the breakers, dimly guessed at, overside;
While her decks are in confusion, and the wreck drops momently,
And she drifts in dark and panic to the death she cannot see.
But out in the open ocean, where the great waves call and cry,
Leap and thunder at her taffrail, while the scud blows stinging by,
With the life still strong within her, struggling onward through the blast,
Till one last long wave shall whelm her, and our voyaging is past.
