Free Verse · Death & Loss
The Ocean Said to Me Once
by Stephen Crane · 1895
The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this —
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
"Tell her this
And more —
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“The Ocean Said to Me Once” by Stephen Crane — quilloak.com/poems/the-ocean-said-to-me-once
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Ocean Said to Me Once
- Poet
- Stephen Crane
- Published
- 1895
- Length
- 19 lines
- Form
- Free Verse, Short Poems
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Grief, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 19 lines · 2 stanzas of 8–11 lines
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a free verse, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Stephen Crane1871–1900
- Source record
- PoetryDBThe Ocean Said to Me Once by stephen-crane, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1895
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 944b28ec399bd8fc…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
Keep reading
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe · 1849
41 lines · ballad
Remember
Christina Rossetti · 1862
14 lines · sonnet
When I Am Dead, My Dearest (Song)
Christina Rossetti · 1862
16 lines · lyric