The Call

The Sea
Sends its call to me, shut within
The four walls of a dusty beated room.
Outside, the clanging rush and groan
Of trams, and the sullen roar
Of the city, as its great heart throbs
With the pulsatings of a million lives.
And I, perched high upon my office stool
Have sent my soul
To the hungry surge
Of the Sea.

Somewhere—is a little friendly bay,
Quite small and very far removed
From men.
And there, softly sounding on the stones
Or snarling round the great raw rocks,
The gulls scream and swoop
To the Sea.

Always she gives, to those who ask,
From her vast depths never does she
Deny those who come to her arms, from the heat
Of towns and the dust of highways.
Creep through the streets with thy coolness
And take my life,
Oh, Sea!

From the heat and the noise and the greyness,
To thy far-stretching, gentle-swelling spaces,
You are kind to the gull and small stone;
Even so—
Be thou kind
To me.

—S. G. Marshall .