Ernest Dowson The Sea-Change

Lowry refers to Ernest Dowson's  The Sea-Change in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; "I shall bend my sail when the great day comes; thy kisses on my face— and anger and regret shall fade, and in thy salt embrace all that I knew in all my mind shall no more have a place; the weary ways of men and one woman I shall forget...." (Pg111-12).

The Sea-Change

Where river and ocean meet in a great tempestuous
          frown,
Beyond the bar, where on the dunes the white-
          capped rollers break;
Above, one windmill stands forlorn on the arid,
          grassy down:
I will set my sail on a stormy day and cross the
          bar and seek
That I have sought and never found, the ex-
          quisite one crown,
Which crowns one day with all its calm the
          passionate and the weak.

When the mad winds are unreined, wilt thou not
          storm, my sea?
(I have ever loved thee so, I have ever done thee
          wrong
In drear terrestrial ways.) When I trust myself
          to thee
With a last great hope, arise and sing thine ultimate,
          great song
Sung to so many better-men, O sing at last to me,
That which when once a man has heard, he heeds
          not over long.

I will bend my sail when the great day comes; thy
          kisses on my face
Shall seal all things that are old, outworn; and
          anger and regret
Shall fade as the dreams and days shall fade, and in
          thy salt embrace,
When thy fierce caresses blind mine eyes and my
          limbs grow stark and set,
All that I know in all my mind shall no more have
          a place;
The weary ways of men and one woman I shall
          forget.


Sea-change or seachange is a poetic or informal term meaning a gradual transformation in which the form is retained but the substance is replaced, in this case with a marvellous petrification. It was originally a song of comfort to the bereaved Ferdinand over his father's death by drowning. The expression is Shakespeare's, taken from the song in The Tempest, when Ariel sings,


"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell." Read more on Wikipedia