Lyrics The Seafarer - William Carlos Williams

The Seafarer

The sea will wash in but the rocks-jagged ribs
riding the cloth of foam or a knob or pinnacles
with gannets-
are the stubborn man.
He invites the storm, he lives by it!
instinct with fears that are not fears but prickles of ecstacy,
a secret liquor, a fire that inflames his blood to coldness so that
the rocks seem rather to leap at
the sea than the sea to envelope them.
They strain forward to grasp ships or even the
sky itself that bends down to be torn upon them.
To which he says, It is I!
I who am the rocks!
Without me nothing laughs.