The Seafarer

I sing my own true story, tell my travels,

How I have often suffered times of hardship.

Oppressed by cold my feet were

bound by frost In icy bonds.

hung around

by icicles

Sometimes I made the song of the wild swan My pleasure, or the gannet’s call, the cry

Of curlews for the missing mirth of men, The singing gull instead of mead in hall.

Storms beat the rock cliffs, and icy-winged

The tern replied, the horn-beaked eagle shrieked.

The groves bear blossom, cities grow more bright, Fields become beautiful, the world speeds up;

Then everything eggs on the eager spirit Of him who has the mind to travel far on the sea-paths.

Even now my heart Journeys beyond its confines and my thoughts Over the sea, across the whale’s domain

Travel afar the regions of the earth, And then come back to me, greedy and longing.

The cuckoo cries out, and incites the breast On to the whale’s roads irresistibly,

Because the joys of God mean more to me Than this dead transitory life on land.

Let us think out where we may have our home,

And then consider how we may go thither.