# Poems and Ballads (second series)/Ex-Voto

Previously printed in The Athenæum, June 2nd, 1877, p. 703.
EX-VOTO.
When their last hour shall rise Pale on these mortal eyes, Herself like one that dies, And kiss me dying The cold last kiss, and fold Close round my limbs her cold Soft shade as raiment rolled And leave them lying,
If aught my soul would say Might move to hear me pray The birth‑god of my day That he might hearken, This grace my heart should crave,
To find no landward grave That worldly springs make brave, World's winters darken,
Nor grow through gradual hours The cold blind seed of flowers Made by new beams and showers From limbs that moulder, Nor take my part with earth, But find for death's new birth A bed of larger girth, More chaste and colder.
Not earth's for spring and fall, Not earth's at heart, not all Earth's making, though men call Earth only mother, Not hers at heart she bare Me, but thy child, O fair Sea, and thy brother's care, The wind thy brother.
Yours was I born, and ye, The sea‑wind and the sea, Made all my soul in me A song for ever, A harp to string and smite For love's sake of the bright Wind and the sea's delight, To fail them never:
Not while on this side death I hear what either saith And drink of either's breath With heart's thanksgiving That in my veins like wine Some sharp salt blood of thine, Some springtide pulse of brine, Yet leaps up living.
When thy salt lips wellnigh Sucked in my mouth's last sigh, Grudged I so much to die
This death as others? Was it no ease to think The chalice from whose brink Fate gave me death to drink Was thine—my mother's?
Thee too, the all‑fostering earth, Fair as thy fairest birth, More than thy worthiest worth, We call, we know thee, More sweet and just and dread Than live men highest of head Or even thy holiest dead Laid low below thee.
The sunbeam on the sheaf, The dewfall on the leaf, All joy, all grace, all grief, Are thine for giving;
Of thee our loves are born, Our lives and loves, that mourn And triumph; tares with corn, Dead seed with living:
All good and ill things done In eyeshot of the sun At last in thee made one Rest well contented; All words of all man's breath And works he doth or saith, All wholly done to death, None long lamented.
A slave to sons of thee, Thou, seeming, yet art free; But who shall make the sea Serve even in seeming? What plough shall bid it bear Seed to the sun and the air, Fruit for thy strong sons' fare, Fresh wine's foam streaming?
What oldworld son of thine, Made drunk with death as wine, Hath drunk the bright sea's brine With lips of laughter? Thy blood they drink; but he Who hath drunken of the sea Once deeplier than of thee Shall drink not after.
Of thee thy sons of men Drink deep, and thirst again; For wine in feasts, and then In fields for slaughter; But thirst shall touch not him Who hath felt with sense grown dim Rise, covering lip and limb, The wan sea's water.
All fire of thirst that aches The salt sea cools and slakes More than all springs or lakes,
Freshets or shallows; Wells where no beam can burn Through frondage of the fern That hides from hart and hern The haunt it hallows.
Peace with all graves on earth For death or sleep or birth Be alway, one in worth One with another; But when my time shall be, O mother, O my sea, Alive or dead, take me, Me too, my mother.