SEASCAPE^©

Earth Children turn their new eyes upward,
As the rain falls into outstreched arms.
The world moves with beauty beneath their bodies.
The frenzied sea crys upon the shore.

The dawn infant breathes its first crystal breath.
As nature sweet incense flows through time.
The cycle of birth has now turned once around,
and set into motion the cycle of life

Young mountain lovers quench their thirst for sunlight,
and wet their tongues in the forest land stream.
Then bathe neath the silver waters of the moon
Through the night star's great prism frolic their dreams.

Amid the towering comstolk forests the new ones scamper
They run to eat of lifes blessed grain
The deep crop of summer is ready for harvest.
and autumns' celebration has come again.

This untitled poem is one of the two first published writings by Bruce Springsteen. It was published on the Apr 1969 edition of Seascape (or Seascapes according to Brucebase [read below]), the school literary magazine of Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ. Note that the poem was erroneously attributed in print to "Bruce Sprengsteen". The SEASCAPE title is not printed on the magazine, but was given to Brucebase by the librarian of Ocean County College [read below]. The other publishing on this Apr 1969 edition is a metaphorical paragraph entitled MY LADY.

Only a few issues of this publishing are known to exist. Most fans have seen Springsteen's writings in Seascape only under glass at the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame Museum in Cleveland. Recently, an issue of this Seascape edition was donated for The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection at the Asbury Park Public Library, becoming the 3114th accepted item into the collection which is devoted to preserving the writing history and cultural legacy of Bruce Springsteen and members of the E Street Band.

Most of the above info is taken from Backstreets.com. However, Brucebase has some additional and contradictory info about MY LADY and SEASCAPE [read below].

If you have any corrections or additional info, please contact me via the below form or by email:

According to John at Brucebase:

We describe the publication from which the poems emanate as the school's "LITERARY Yearbook", not the Student Yearbook. It is our understanding, from correspondence from an Ocean County College librarian, that the school published an annual Literary Yearbook and an annual Student Yearbook and that both are hard cover and hard spine - i.e. books.

Regarding the titles, this is a point we need (and will) further research. There is also some question/confusion as to the initial (first) publishing date of the Springsteen poems (Jan 69 or Apr 69) or whether there were in fact two slightly different print runs (or two entirely different publications) that included the Springsteen poems.

It is our understanding the book/magazine is titled "SEASCAPES". We have one of the poems listed as "Seascape" (singular). The title of both of the two poems "Seascape" and "My Lady" were provided to us by an Ocean County College librarian, prior to us seeing the photos of the poems. From what we can see there is clearly no title shown for one of the two poems. We don't know what would have motivated this Librarian (who is no longer there) to give us the title "Seascape" while at the same time mentioning to us that the publication is called Seascapes. Weird, because we questioned that very point SEASCAPES/"Seascape" at the time with the Librarian. The only thing we can deduct is that there is some alternative publication of the poems with that title... or the librarian at Ocean County College made a mistake. If it turns out there is no title we'll definitely change it to "untitled". We won't make up any title.