Transience

A long, long time ago
In a hovel by the sea
There we lived in happiness
Us, my mother and me
Until the world’s Evils
Stole her away from me

Death was on her eyes
When she ceased to gaze at me
And I only turned away
With the call of the rolling sea
The sweetest relief to me it gave
The undulating sea

In the deepest hour of night
From whence the rolling sea
The shining, warm silver light
Of the gift it gave to me
A seal so lustrous and so bright
From the undulating sea

And away from me he carried his light
Back to the rolling sea
My relief had gone with him
The sea’s two gifts to me
Gone, into the moonless night
And the undulating sea

Now before the approach of dawn
I long to at last be free
In the darkness I will claim
The sea’s last gift to me
I will now be swept away
To the undulating sea