1. And lads like pearls that were picked for finery
Time flashes from them in its unveiling

2. I met them by night when it was unveiled
By their faces and their goblets' concealing

3. Aboard an Abyssinian ship that plunged
Into the billows and climbed their scaling

4. As if her sails were the white locks of
An aged Najashi whenever they’re flailing

5. And a sea like unto heaven, it has foam
Like it twinkles with the stars of the trail in

6. She showed in the spindrift of waves some pearls
As flowers carried by the winds unveiling

7. We hunted the whale therein as game
With a guile by which we’d rightly curtail him

8. We show him we’d be kind and spare his life
Yet we eat him, though he spared our ailing

9. As if the wave, when we sped there to hunt
Were mountains emerald and whales conveying

10. Scooping like sickness for those who spy them
It saw we would lessen its sons by prevailing

11. And its wind blew at us with snarling
Nearly igniting the water that's trailing

12. And nearly sent us back to our source
As pearls belong only to seas as their dwelling

13. We fled and for us prayer was wings
After despair He saved us from impaling