Versamelde gedigte

[Over the combers' cream ridged crest]

Over the combers' cream ridged crest

The gannet wings in perfect glides;

Upon the after-surge, at rest,

The safely floating grey gull slides.

The long half circle of the shore

With wetted edge and whiter sand,

Thrills, echoeing to the breaker's roar

That sounds a message to the land -

The call of far off unseen things,

The pent-up passion of all years,

The memories that the deep sea brings

Of saddened days and stifled tears,

The carol fluted by the wind

Through bending palms in perfumed isles

White coral ridge, the bar behind,

The atap huts on wave washed piles -

The void volcano climbing high

To scale the skies its long spent smoke

Darkened with death in days gone by

When in the night its silence broke;

The purring psalm the typhoon makes

Far off when swelling in its stride

It slants athwart the rocks and shakes

The hidden deeps where dead things hide -

These, when the great sea combers call

Respond as chords in sympathy

To one wild note that throbs through all

That live and die upon the sea.

Jagger-biblioteek, Universiteit van Kaapstad