Splendors of morning the billow-crests brighten,
Lighting and luring them on to the land,
Far-away waves where the wan vessels whiten,
Blue rollers breaking in surf where we stand.
Curved like the necks of a legion of horses,
Each with his froth-gilded mane flowing free,
Hither they speed in perpetual courses,
Bearing thy riches, O beautiful sea!

Strong with the striving of yesterday's surges,
Lashed by the wanton winds leagues from the shore,
Each, driven fast by its follower, urges
Fearlessly those that are fleeting before;
How they leap over the ridges we walk on,
Flinging us gifts from the depths of the sea, —
Silvery fish for the foam-haunting falcon,
Palm-weed and pearls for my darling and me!

Light falls her foot where the rift follows after,
Finer her hair than your feathery spray,
Sweeter her voice than your infinite laughter, —
Hist! ye wild couriers, list to my lay!
Deep in the chambers of grottos auroral
Morn laves her jewels and bends her red knee:
Thence to my dear one your amber and coral
Bring for her dowry, O beautiful sea!

Up and down the high woods, up and down the low, 
Must 'a' gone a-hunting morts of years ago;
When the beaver whistled, when the aurochs ran, 
Must 'a' been a-hunting when the world began. 

For I half remember (tusk on kingly tusk) 
How I've seen the mammoths moving through the dusk: 
Mammoths all a-marching, terrible to see, 
Through an awful oak-wood glooming ghoulishly. 

Shadows huge and hairy, as the day was done, 
Somehow I remember, walking one by one, 
Bulls grotesque and solemn, pulling boughs in halves; 
Running 'neath their mothers, little idiot calves. 

Lumping through the oak-swamp, vast and dim and grey, 
I have watched the mammoths pass at dusk of day; 
Through the quaking hollow, through the tree-trunks stark, 
Gleams of mighty ivory breaking up the dark. 

That's the way I dream it, that's the way I know, 
Must 'a' gone a-hunting, years and years ago: 
For I've seen the mammoths — 'tisn't you that could — 
Moving like cathedrals through a dreadful wood.