"The Swimmer" is a poem by the Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon. The poem is from his last volume of poems Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes published in 1870, when he was living at Melbourne. In The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, it is grouped among "Poems Swinburnian in Form and Pessimism, but full of the Personality of Gordon."
The poem was set to music by Edward Elgar as the fifth and last song in his song-cycle Sea Pictures.
Square brackets [ ] indicate text omitted in Elgar's song. Italics indicate text repeated in the song.
"The Swimmer"
In addition to the D major melody, Elgar incorporates music from earlier songs in the cycle: "Where Corals Lie" (at "God surely loved us a little then") and "Sea Slumber Song" (at "The skies were fairer").