I.

Polytentacular, it grips
And rends to flinders passing ships.

II.

By covering itself with sand,
The Kraken poses as a Land—

And rises with an awful roar
When hapless sailors come ashore,

Till falling back, it drags them down
To whirl and spin, and fail, and drown.

III.

A dozen years have come and gone
Since when I held the watch at dawn

And through the water clear as air
Saw my own shadow riding there;

And stared into the glassy sea
As jelly eyes stared up at me.

Image: closer detail: ship and kraken by Flickr user Deborah, published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC-BY 2.0) license .