Rudyard Kipling

The Seven Seas Rudyard Kipling

Our brows are wreathed with spindrift and the weed is on our knees; Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas. From reef and rock and skerry-over headland, ness and voe-The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors; Through the yelling Channel tempest when the syren hoots and roars-By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail-As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail. We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care, The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer; From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chainsThe lover from the sea-rim drawn-his love in English lanes