 Vaughan Williams ' program note for A Sea Symphony discusses how the text was to be treated as music . The composer writes , " The plan of the work is symphonic rather than narrative or dramatic , and this may be held to justify the frequent repetition of important words and phrases which occur in the poem . The words as well as the music are thus treated symphonically . " Walt Whitman 's poems inspired him to write the symphony , and Whitman 's use of free verse became appreciated at a time where fluidity of structure was becoming more attractive than traditional , metrical settings of text . This fluidity helped facilitate the non @-@ narrative , symphonic treatment of text that Vaughan Williams had in mind . In the third movement in particular , the text is loosely descriptive and can be " pushed about by the music " , some lines being repeated , some not consecutive in the written text immediately following one another in the music , and some left out entirely . 
