"The Sea of Death" (A Poem)

Originally published in the March 1822 issue of London Magazine, Thomas Hood's poem "The Sea of Death" has been widely anthologized over the course of two centuries and, as scholars like Walter Jerrold attest, is a prime example of Romanticist sentiments: the narrator watches death akin to a fisherman observing life beneath the waves surrounding his anchored boat.[1] In fact, as Mikhail Iampolski argues, Hood's text, along with other works such as Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium-Eater, uses water as a symbol of the veil between this world and the next, with humanity peering through the aqueous mass into the land of the dead.[2]

Methought I saw 
Life swiftly treading over endless space; 
And, at her foot-print, but a bygone pace, 
The ocean-past, which, with increasing wave, 
Swallowed her steps like a pursuing grave.

Sad were my thoughts that anchored silently 
On the dead waters of that passionless sea, 
Unstirred by any touch of living breath: 
Silence hung over it, and drowsy Death, 
Like a gorged sea-bird, slept with folded wings 
On crowded carcasses – sad passive things 
That wore the thin grey surface like a veil 
Over the calmness of their features pale.

And there were spring-faced cherubs that did sleep 
Like water-lilies on that motionless deep, 
How beautiful! with bright unruffled hair 
On sleek unfretted brows, and eyes that were 
Buried in marble tombs, a pale eclipse! 
And smile-bedimpled cheeks, and pleasant lips, 
Meekly apart, as if the soul intense 
Spake out in dreams of its own innocence: 
And so they lay in loveliness, and kept 
The birth-night of their peace, that Life even wept 
With very envy of their happy fronts; 
For there were neighbor brows scarred by the brunts 
Of strife and sorrowing – where Care had set 
His crooked autograph, and marred the jet 
Of glossy locks, with hollow eyes forlorn, 
And lips that curled in bitterness and scorn – 
Wretched, – as they had breathed of this world’s pain, 
And so bequeathed it to the world again, 
Through the beholder’s heart, in heavy sighs. 
So lay they garmented in torpid light, 
Under the pall of a transparent night, 
Like solemn apparitions lulled sublime 
To everlasting rest, – and with them Time 
Slept, as he sleeps upon the silent face
Of a dark dial in a sunless place.[3]

Works Referenced

Hood, Thomas. "The Sea of Death." The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hood. Vol. 1. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1878. 176-177.

Iampolski, Mikhail. The Memory of Tiresias: Intertextuality and Film. Trans. Harsha Ram. Berekley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.

Jerrold, Walter. Thomas Hood: His Life and Times. New York: John Lane Company, 1909.
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[1] Jerrold, 199.
[2] Iampolski, 262.
[3] Hood, 176-177.