Rondel for Sea Sunday

The freight ferry MV Nord Pas-de-Calais setting out from Dover into a choppy English Channel, 11th August 2011.

A poem reposted according to tradition for Sea Sunday, an annual ecumenical day of prayer for seafarers, whose essential work and hard lives are often overlooked and forgotten. The Catholic charity for seafarers is Stella Maris, the ‘Apostleship of the Sea’, which was founded in Glasgow in 1920. 

Psalm 106 (107): 23–24 

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep; 

Little else they see who keep

Watch and faith with brothers’ accord.

Neither wealth nor fame they reap,

But they have a different reward:

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep.

They see more than log-books record:

What it is to watch slow, steep

Heaps of water leaping aboard;

They see tumble-tumult and broad 

Dazzling seas and comets’ sweep;

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep.

‘They that go down to the sea in ships’, words from the 106th Psalm set to music by Herbert Sumsion (1899–1995).