The Sea and the Shore

To me the sea is a continual miracle—
Mysterious oceans where the streams empty,
Infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
Covering three-fourths of the world.
All the wonders of the sea are here,
And this is ocean’s poem.

On floats the unbounded sea in distant blue,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
Heaving sea of stretched ground-swells, breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sibilant sea with vistas far and foam, 
Dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing,
Oceans musical, with whistling winds and music of the waves.

Waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach,
Undulating waves with shining curving motions,
Liquid, uneven, emulous waves, tender and pensive,
Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing.

Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
Sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
And again another behind embracing and lapping—
Soothe! soothe! soothe!
The scallop-edged waves, the ladled cups, and the dancing motion,
The milk-white crests curling over, the frolicsome crests and glistening,
Ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,

Not safe and peaceful only, waves rous’d and ominous too,
Unquiet ocean brooding scowl and murk,
Out of the depths the storm’s abysmic waves, who knows whence?
Strong tumultuous waves, chaotically surging, the wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps,
Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Unloos’d hurricanes, unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness.

The hoarse monotonous surging of the husky-nois’d sea,
Ever those muffled distant lion roars, proud music of the storm,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing.

The panorama of the sea,
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim—
But the sea itself?
If you would understand me go to the water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key.

On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
The great steady wind, floating so buoyant, tossing the waves, with milk-white foam on the waters.

Out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, a myriad myriad waves hastening,
The white arms, troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
Lifting up their necks out of the rolling ocean in ceaseless flow,
The milk-white crests curling over, the frolicsome crests and glistening,
In every crest some undulating light or shade—
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!

The mystic surf-beat of the sea,
That inbound urge and urge of waves, the mad pushes of waves upon the land,
Shore where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves,
Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid, seeking the shores forever;
O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love. 

By the marge of restless oceans, the tides continually rush or recede,
Sparkling and hurrying, glittering tides with ceaseless swell,
The many-moving sea-tides, whirling in and out with eddies and foam,
The waters roll slowly continually up the weird, white-gray beach,
The ocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in with slow-measured sweep.
Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling.

That spread of waves and gray-white beach—for miles, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but flat gray sand, a stretch of interminable sand, hard and smooth and broad, salt, monotonous, senseless. Such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance—so indescribably comforting—grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual—where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand. How one dwells on the simplicity, even vacuity! Not without its tales of pathos—tales, too, of grandest heroes and heroisms.

Salty shore and breeze and brine,
Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming,
Tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Chaff, straw, weeds, and the sea-gluten, left by the tide,
The lines underfoot, those slender windrows,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and land of the globe,
That suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid,
Fusion of ocean and land, where it is neither ground nor sea,
Striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read, seen, heard.

The measur’d sea-surf beating on the sand,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The rocking in the sand, where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
With rustle and hiss and boom and foam,
And rhythmic rasping of sands and waves,
With the surge for bass and accompaniment low and hoarse,
And many a thump as of low bass drums.

The old mother sways to and fro singing her husky song,
With husky-haughty lips,
The husky whispering waves bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying.
Over the waves many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,
Many a muffled confession—the first and last confession of the globe,
Many a sob and whisper’d word, as of speakers far or hid,
Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs.

On, on, and do your part, ye burying tide!
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysm,
Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear,
What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters?
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears, thy lonely state—
A lack from all eternity in thy content,
Something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet never gains’t.

Surely some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,
Some vast soul like a planet stopt, arrested, tied,
Some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent,
Some mighty freedom pent, denied,
Some cosmic right withheld—
Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest.

NEXT: THE POET AND THE SEA AND SHORE

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