Dame Janet Baker with the LSO under Sir John Barbirolli 1966 RecordingThe Swimmer is a long alliterative poem by the Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon.Part of it was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar as the fifth song in his song cycle \"Sea Pictures\".The Swimmer\n\nWith short, sharp, violent lights made vivid,\nTo southward far as the sight can roam,\nOnly the swirl of the surges livid,\nThe seas that climb and the surfs that comb.\nOnly the crag and the cliff to nor\'ward,\nThe rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,\nWaifs wreck\'d seaward and wastedshoreward,\nOn shallows sheeted with flaming foam.\nA grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,\nAnd shores trod seldom by feet of men --\nWhere the batter\'d hull and the broken\nmast lie,\nThey have lain embedded these long years ten.\n\nLove! Love! when we wander\'d here together,Hand in hand! Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,God surely loved us a little then.The skies were fairer and shores were firmer\nThe blue sea over the bright sand roll\'d;\nBabble and prattle, and ripple and murmur,\nSheen of silver and glamour of gold.\nSheen of silver and glamour of gold.\n\nSo girt with tempest and wing\'d with thunder,\nAnd clad with lightning and shod with sleet,\nThe strong winds treading the swift waves under\nThe flying rollers with frothy feet.\nOne gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on\nThe sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson,\nA death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun,\nThat strikes through his stormy winding-sheet.\n\nOh! brave white horses! you gather and gallop,\nThe storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;\nOh! brave white horses! you gather and gallop,\nThe storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;\nNow the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop\nIn your hollow backs, or your high arch\'d manes.\nI would ride as never a man has ridden\nIn your sleepy,swirling surges hidden,\nI would ride as never a man has ridden\nTo gulfs foreshadow\'d through strifes forbidden,\nWhere no light wearies and no love wanes. Baker, Barbirolli, Elgar, Glenmed, Janet, LSO, Pictures, Sea, Swimmer