]|THE SEA 



calms of the sea its passions, its subtle moods; 

 more than this, it absorbed of the human life 

 whose destiny was involved with the vessel the 

 tragedy, the woe. It had two lives a forest life 

 and a sea life. By force of tragedy alone it became 

 driftwood. Winter and summer the sea sang its 

 brave songs over the boat and chanted her requiem 

 at last as she lay on the ledge. This fragment drifted 

 ashore out of the wreck of a vessel, out of the 

 wreck of great hopes, out of the passion of the sea. ' 

 Driftwood, then, is to be lighted in a spirit of 

 reverence. No ordinary blaze, rather is it an altar 

 fire to Poseidon, to whom were immolated the 

 victims; to Aphrodite born of the waves. Rather \ 

 is it the funeral pyre of a sea-bird, now to rise(/ A 

 again from its ashes. It is not to warm the hands, 

 this magic sea-fire, which has borrowed the 

 emerald and sapphire and azure of the waters and 

 reflects still the phosphorescent gleam which lay 

 in the wake of the vessel, but to kindle some 

 feeling and to nurture vague dreams. To set match 

 to this pyre is to invoke the spirit of the deep, to 

 hear the crooning of some distant surf, the hissing 

 of the fretful spray; to conjure up again the won- 

 drous opaline sea. 



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