Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land

There is a hunger that the sea inspires, and Charles Godfrey Leland gave it voice in this spirited collection. The Songs of the Sea sweep you into a world of salt spray and starlit horizons, where mermaids lure sailors from their compasses and storms become symphonies. These are poems written by someone who believed the ocean was the last true wilderness, a place where a man could shed the dull weight of landbound life and become something wilder, truer. The second half, the Lays of the Land, captures the peculiar melancholy of return: the taverns and temptations of foreign ports, the strange loneliness of standing on solid ground after months at sea. Together, these poems paint a portrait of the sailor caught between two worlds, always yearning for the one he's not in. Leland writes with a romantic's earnestness and a folklorist's eye for the strange and wonderful. If you've ever dreamed of throwing off the dock lines and letting the horizon decide your fate, these are the poems for you.