The poem begins with a question: where can anyone answer the sea except in the rain? The sea is vast and always speaking, and the only fitting reply seems to be something equally big and watery, falling from the sky. Rain becomes a kind of conversation between the weather and the ocean.
The second stanza turns strange. The rain, or perhaps the sea's surface under it, is compared to "the skin of the Lord" and then, abruptly, to "some foul old swan." One image is holy, the other ugly and a little comic. That jolt is the heart of the poem. The speaker doesn't settle on awe or disgust but lets both sit side by side, as if the grey, wrinkled, rain-pocked water could be divine and shabby at once.
The mood is hushed, wry and slightly unsettled. The title, "Vantage point," suggests the speaker is watching from a spot where all this can be seen, and what they see resists any tidy meaning.