"The Swimmer" is a poem by the Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. The poem is from his last volume of poems Bush Ballads and Galloping Hymns published in 1870, when he was living at Melbourne. The poem is described among "Poems Swinburnian and Form and Pessimism, but full of the Personality of Gordon",
Contents
The poem was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar as the fifth and last song in his song-cycle Sea Pictures.
Lyrics
Square brackets [ ] indicate text omitted in Elgar's song. Italics indicate text repeated in the song.
"The Swimmer"
Elgar's setting
In addition to the D major melody, Elgar incorporates music from earlier songs in the cycle: "Where Corals Lie" (at "God surely loved us a little then") and "Sea Slumber Song" (at "The skies were fairer").
References
The Swimmer (poem) Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA