OFF SHORE. 41 



and sought home, spoil, or change upon the track 

 less waste. Into every past the sea has sometime 

 sounded its mighty note of joy or anguish, and 

 deep in every memory there remains some vision of 

 tossing waves that once broke on eyes long sealed. 

 All day the free winds have filled the heavens, 

 and flung here and there a handful of foam upon 

 the surface of the deep. No cloud has dimmed the 

 splendor of a day which has filled the round heavens 

 with soft music and touched the sea with strange and 

 changeful beauty. It has been enough to wait and 

 watch, to forget self, to escape the limitations of 

 personality, and to become part of the movement, 

 which, hour by hour, has passed through one mar 

 velous change after another, until now it seems to 

 pause under the sleepless vigilance of the stars. 

 They look down from their immeasurable altitudes 

 on the vast expanse of which only a miniature hemi 

 sphere stretches before me. How wide and fath 

 omless seems the ocean, even from a single isolated 

 point ! What infinite distances are only half veiled 

 by the distant horizon line ! What islands and 

 continents and undiscovered worlds lie beyond that 

 faint and ever receding circle where the sight 

 pauses, while the thought travels unimpeded on its 

 pathless way? There lies the untamed world which 

 brooks no human control, and preserves the prime 

 val solitude of the epochs before men came ; there 

 are the elemental forces mingling and commin 

 gling in eternal fellowships and rivalries. There the 



