Two more lovely little poems about the sea.
He said—
A Calm At Sea
Lies a calm along the deep,
Like a mirror sleeps the ocean,
And the anxious steersman sees
Round him neither stir nor motion.
Not a breath of wind is stirring,
Dread the hush as of the grave –
In the weary waste of waters
Not the lifting of a wave.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Translated by Theodore Martin
She said—
The Even Sea
Meekly the sea
now plods to shore:
white-faced cattle use to their yard,
the waves, with weary knees,
come back from the bouldered hills
of high water,
where all the gray, rough day they seethed like bulls,
till the wind laid down its goads
at shift of tide, and sundown
gentled them, with lowered necks
they amble up the beach
as to their stalls.
May Swenson
