University of Virginia Library

If there is nothing sure but the unsure,
Which is at once its cradle and its grave,
Creative and destructive, hand that molds,
And feet that trample, instruments of Change,
Which is itself the instrument of Power:
If these, our bodies, conscious of themselves,
And cognizable by others like themselves,
Waste and supply their forces day by day,
Till there is nothing left of what they were,
The whole man being re-made from head to foot;
How comes it then, I say, that standing here
Beside the waters of this quiet bay,
Which welter shoreward, roughened by the wind,
Twinkling in sunshine, I am the same man
Who gazed upon them thirty years ago,
Lulled by their placid motion, and the sense
Of something happy they begat in me?

I saunter by the shore and lose myself
In the blue waters, stretching on, and on,
Beyond the low-lying headland, dark with woods,
And on to the green waste of sea, content
To be alone—but I am not alone,
For solitude like this is populous,
And its abundant life of sky and sun,
High-floating clouds, low mists, and wheeling birds,
And waves that ripple shoreward all day long,
Whether the tide is setting in or out,
Forever rippling shoreward, dark and bright,
As lights and shadows and the shifting winds
Pursue each other in their endless play,
Is more than the companionship of man.

I know our inland landscapes, pleasant fields,
Where lazy cattle browse, and chew the cud;
The smooth declivities of quiet vales:
The swell of uplands, and the stretch of woods,
Within whose shady places Solitude
Holds her perpetual court. They touch me not,
Or only touch me in my shallowest moods,
And leave no recollection. They are naught.
But thou, O Sea, whose majesty and might
Are mild and beautiful in this still bay,
But terrible in the mid-ocean deeps,
I never see thee but my soul goes out
To thee, and is sustained and comforted;
For she discovers in herself, or thee,
A stern necessity for stronger life,
And strength to live it: she surrenders all
She had, and was, and is possessed of more,
With more to come—endurance, patience, peace.

I love thee, Ocean, and delight in thee,
Thy color, motion, vastness,—all the eye
Takes in from shore, and on the tossing waves;
Nothing escapes me, not the least of weeds
That shrivels and blackens on the barren sand.
I have been walking on the yellow sands,
Watching the long, white, ragged fringe of foam
The waves had washed up on the curves of beach,
The endless fluctuation of the waves,
The circuit of the sea-gulls, low, aloft,
Dipping their wings an instant in the brine,
And urging their swift flight to distant woods,
And round and over all the perfect sky,
Clear, cloudless, luminous in the summer noon.

I have been sitting on the stern, gray rocks,
That push their way up from the under-world,
And shoulder the waves aside, and musing there
The sea of Time has ebbed with me, and I,
Borne backward with it, have beheld the Past,
Times, places, generations, all that was
From the infancy of Earth. The primitive race,
That skulked in caves, and wore the skin of beasts:
Shepherds and herdsmen, whose nomadic tents
Were pitched by river-banks in pasture-lands,
Where no man was before them; husbandmen,
Who shaped out for themselves rude implements
Of tillage, and for whom the Earth brought forth
The first of harvests, happy when the sheaves
Were gathered in, for robber-bands were near—
Horsemen with spears, who seized their flocks and herds,
And led their wives and children captive—all
Save those who perished fighting sold as slaves!
Rapine and murder triumph. I behold
The shock of armies in forgotten fields,
The flight of arrows, and the flash of swords,
Shields pierced, and helmets cloven, and hosts gone down
Behind the scythèd chariots: cities girt
By grim, beleaguering, formidable foes,
With battering-rams that breach the tottering walls,
And crush the gaunt defenders; mailèd men
That ride against each other and are unhorsed
Where lances shiver and the dreadful sweep
Of the battle-ax makes havoc: thunderous guns
Belching destruction through the sulphurous cloud
That wraps the league-long lines of infantry;
The charge of cavalry on hollow squares—
Sharp shots, and riderless horses! This is War,
And these are men—thy children, Earth! The Sea
Has never bred such monsters, though it swarms
With living things; they have not overrun
Its spacious realms, and left them solitudes:
The desolation of the unfooted waves
Is not of their dark making, but of thine,
Inhospitable, barren, solemn Sea!

Thou wert before the Continents, before
The hollow heavens, which like another sea
Encircles them, and thee; but whence thou wert,
And when thou wast created, is not known.
Antiquity was young when thou wast old.
There is no limit to thy strength, no end
To thy magnificence. Thou goest forth
On thy long journeys to remotest lands,
And comest back unwearied. Tropic isles,
Thick set with pillared palms, delay thee not,
Nor Arctic icebergs hasten thy return.
Summer and winter are alike to thee,
The settled, sullen sorrow of the sky
Empty of light; the laughter of the sun;
The comfortable murmur of the wind
From peaceful countries, and the mad uproar
That storms let loose upon thee in the night
Which they create and quicken with sharp, white fire,
And crash of thunders! Thou art terrible
In thy tempestuous moods, when the loud winds
Precipitate their strength against the waves;
They rave, and grapple and wrestle, until at last,
Baffled by their own violence, they fall back,
And thou art calm again, no vestige left
Of the commotion, save the long, slow roll
In summer days on beaches far away.

The heavens look down and see themselves in thee,
And splendors, seen not elsewhere, that surround
The rising and the setting of the sun
Along thy vast and solitary realms.
The blue dominion of the air is thine,
And thine the pomps and pageants of the day,
The light, the glory, the magnificence,
The congregated masses of the clouds,
Islands, and mountains, and long promontories,
Floating at unaccessible heights whereto
Thy fathomless depths are shallow—all are thine.
And thine the silent, happy, awful night,
When over thee and thy charmed waves the moon
Rides high, and when the last of stars is gone,
And darkness covers all things with its pall—
Darkness that was before the worlds were made,
And will be after they are dead. But no,
There is no death—the thing that we call death
Is but another, sadder name for life,
Which is itself an insufficient name,
Faint recognition of that unknown Life—
That Power whose shadow is the Universe.