I. THE LONGSHORE 



Last night the sea-wind was to me 

 A metaphor of liberty, 



And every wave along the beach 

 A starlit music seemed to be. 



To-day the sea-wind is to me 



A fettered soul that would be free, 



And dumbly striving after speech, 

 The tides yearn landward painfully. 



To-morrow how shall sound for me 

 The changing voice of wind and sea? 

 What tidings shall be born of each? 

 What rumour of what mystery? 



The very soul of the longshore Is echoed in that 

 little poem of Mr. William Watson's; so far, 

 that Is, as It speaks to a man who only thinks 

 and feels there; who treats It as a work of 

 nature's art; who answers out of himself the 

 thoughts suggested to him by the sea, and in that 

 sense holds conversation with it. But when one 

 day I showed Changed Voices to a longshoreman 



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