University of Virginia Library

13   Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways — but fear not, deny      not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as      I touch you, or gather from you.
14   I mean tenderly by you,
I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking      down where we lead, and following me and      mine.
15  Me and mine!
We, loose winrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See — the prismatic colors, glistening and rolling!)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting      another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the      swell;
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of      liquid or soil;
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fer-     mented and thrown;
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves      floating, drifted at random;
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;
Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the      cloud-trumpets;
We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence,      spread out before you,
You, up there, walking or sitting,
Whoever you are — we too lie in drifts at your feet.