The world has grown unreal to-day

We drift towards a mystic isle,

With scarce a breath of wind the while.

I hear the murmur of the tide,

I hear you breathing at my side,

The drearness of this inland sea!

A fettered slave, grown old between

The dykes and marshes low and green,

Devoid of wind to stir the deep

Forgotten heart, so long asleep,

This awful hush engulfing things!

The noon-tide hangs with outspread wings

Above the ship, all motionless.

The penitential sails confess

Their sad inertness, damp and brown,

I almost think that you and I

Are floating on a haze of sky,

This is an unknown sphere of dreams,

Or else some region where the beams

Of daylight that have died unblessed

By some kind thought stray seeking rest,

Along the wastes of Zuyder Zee.

How strange to know that youth is ours!

That do we choose a world of flowers

And sunlight waiting to our hand

Is calling for some gladder land,

So easy to attain, yet lo!

We drift amid the mist and woe

Of winter on the Zuyder Zee.

Is there a subtle charm, when sad

Despairing nature makes the glad

Rejoicing spirit pause to think,

Of those dim depths to which may sink

The soul immortal? Where the mind

May grow as sodden as a wind

That dies upon the Zuyder Zee?

When all our loving and our will

To love for ever can't fulfil

Love's promises for age and death?

That like a hushed, unwholesome breath,

From off the marshes in the night

Steals forth, and all our past delight

Is colder than the Zuyder Zee?

The very thought that death is near

Perchance makes life seem doubly dear,

And love more urgent, since they two

May some day fade away, and you

Become a spectral memory,

Devoid of joy! and what of me

Oh! wise, world-weary Zuyder Zee?

Your endless depth of stark despair

But renders sunlit things more fair,

But makes the craving heart more strong

To grasp its pleasures, short or long,

While yet it is To-day, nor wait

Upon the will of doubtful fate,

Lest all emotion rendered numb

With long suppression should become

As you are, soulless Zuyder Zee!