Coromandel Fishers
Rise, brothers, rise, the wakening skies pray
to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn
like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore,
and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for
we are the sons of the sea.
No longer delay, let us hasten away in the
track of the sea-gull’s call,
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother,
the waves are our comrades all.
What though we toss at the fall of the sun
where the hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide
in his breast our lives.
Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and
the scent of the mango grove,
And sweet are the sands at the full o’ the
moon with the sound of the voices we love.
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray
and the dance of the wild foam’s glee:
Row, brothers, row to the blue of the verge,
where the low sky mates with the sea.