Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Sea-Mew lyrics

How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A little shade, the only one
But shadows ever man pursue

Familiar with the waves and free
As if their own white foam were he
His heart upon the heart of ocean
Lay learning all it's mystic motion
And throbbing to the throbbing sea

And such a brightness in his eye
As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nurst
A soul God gave him not at first
To comprehend their majesty

We were not cruel, yet did sunder
His white wing from the blue waves under
And bound it, while his fearless eyes
Shone up to ours in calm surprise
As deeming us some ocean wonder

We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place where he might view
The flowers that curtsey to the bees
The waving of the tall green trees
The falling of the silver dew

But flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim
And when earth's dew around him lay
He thought of ocean's wingèd spray
And his eye waxèd sad and dim

The green trees round him only made
A prison with their darksome shade
And drooped his wing, and mournèd he
For his own boundless glittering sea
Albeit he knew not they could fade

Then One her gladsome face did bring
Her gentle voice's murmuring
In ocean's stead his heart to move
And teach him what was human love:
He thought it a strange, mournful thing

He lay down in his grief to die
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves) because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass
And, with our touch, our agony