Poetry
Henry van Dyke Jr., 1894
A minister who loved birds, ships and the sea writes plain, musical poems about time, strangers and the guest-right of God — quieter and stranger than its era suggests.
Henry van Dyke Jr.
1852–1933
Woodrow Wilson appointed his friend Henry van Dyke — Presbyterian minister and Princeton professor of English — as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands in 1913.
Feels like nature, faith and wonder.
A sailor's love for the sea has fear in it; landsmen never understand.
We men hat go down for a livin’ in ships to the sea—We love it a different way from you poets that ’bide on the land.We are fond of it, sure! But, you take it as comin’ from me,There’s a fear and a hate in our love that a landsman can’t understand.Oh, who could help likin’ the salty smell, and the blueOf the waves that are lazily breathin’ as if they dreamed in the sun?She’s a Sleepin’ Beauty, the sea—but you can’t tell what she’ll do;And the seamen never trust her—they know too well what she’s done! Books by Henry van Dyke Jr.
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