Know you that bottomless and boundless sea,

Each heaving billow whereof is a woman?

Oh, how my love-parched body craves to plunge

Into the soothing substance of this sea!...

Oh, for the joy of absolute abandon

To the caressing furore of this sea;

The frantic joy of breaking all restrictions,

Of daring all the dangers of this sea!

The ecstatic and the harrowing sensation

Of rising, ever rising on a wave,

A giant wave that rises, ever rises,

And then to be replunged into the deep!

The all-absorbing, all-inclusive deep.

What if the mouth doth swallow liquid bitter;

What if the heinous sharks men call disease

Snap at my flesh, infecting me with poison,

And even what if that mysterious mermaid,

That moon-pale Undine claim me as her own

And seal our union with the kiss of death?

What of it? Does not all life end in death?

Give me the death of Tristan and Isolde:

I die for life and love,—I fear not death.