But gallantly she ploughed the main,
     And gloriously her welcome pealed,
     And grandly shone to sky and plain
     The goodly bales her decks revealed;

     Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes
     Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,
     Or where the black blockaded ribs
     Are jammed ’mongst ghostly fleets of ice,

     Or where upon the curling hills
     Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,
     Or where the hand of labour drills
     The stubbornness of earth to shape;

     Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,
     And handicrafts and shapely wares,
     And spinnings of the hermit worms,
     And fruits that bloom by lions’ lairs.

     Come, read the meaning of the deep! 
     The use of winds and waters learn! 
     ’Tis not to make the mother weep
     For sons that never will return;

     ’Tis not to make the nations show
     Contempt for all whom seas divide;
     ’Tis not to pamper war and woe,
     Nor feed traditionary pride;

     ’Tis not to make the floating bulk
     Mask death upon its slippery deck,
     Itself in turn a shattered hulk,
     A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.

     It is to knit with loving lip
     The interests of land to land;
     To join in far-seen fellowship
     The tropic and the polar strand.

     It is to make that foaming Strength
     Whose rebel forces wrestle still
     Thro’ all his boundaried breadth and length
     Become a vassal to our will.

     It is to make the various skies,
     And all the various fruits they vaunt,
     And all the dowers of earth we prize,
     Subservient to our household want.

     And more, for knowledge crowns the gain
     Of intercourse with other souls,
     And Wisdom travels not in vain
     The plunging spaces of the poles.

     The wild Atlantic’s weltering gloom,
     Earth-clasping seas of North and South,
     The Baltic with its amber spume,
     The Caspian with its frozen mouth;

     The broad Pacific, basking bright,
     And girdling lands of lustrous growth,
     Vast continents and isles of light,
     Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;

     She visits these, traversing each;
     They ripen to the common sun;
     Thro’ diverse forms and different speech,
     The world’s humanity is one.

     O may her voice have power to say
     How soon the wrecking discords cease,
     When every wandering wave is gay
     With golden argosies of peace!

     Now when the ark of human fate,
     Long baffled by the wayward wind,
     Is drifting with its peopled freight,
     Safe haven on the heights to find;

     Safe haven from the drowning slime
     Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath; —
     To plant again the foot of Time
     Upon a purer, firmer path;