160 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



expresses the saline quality to which I have re- 

 ferred : — 



" Sea of stretch'd ground-swells, 



Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 



Sea of the brine of life, and of unshovell'd yet always ready 



graves. 

 Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, 

 I am integral with you ; I too am of one phase and of all 

 phases." 



*' Oh, madly the sea pushes upon the land, 

 With love, with love." 



Or this, written upon the beach at Ocean Grove 

 in 1883, — 



"With husky-haughty lips, Sea! 



Where day and night 1 wend thy surf -beat shore. 



Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, 



The troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal. 



Thy ample smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of 



the sun, 

 Thy brooding scowl and murk — thy unloos'd hurricanes, 

 Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; 

 Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears — a lack from 



all eternity in thy content, 

 (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make 



thee greatest — no less could make thee,) 

 Thy loneh' state — something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet 



never gain'st, 

 Surely some right withheld — some voice, in huge monotonous 



rage, of freedom-lover pent, 

 Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those 



breakers. 

 By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, 

 And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves. 

 And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter. 

 And undertones of distant lion roar, 

 (Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear — but now, rapport 



for once, 

 A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) 

 The first and last confession of the globe, 

 Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's ab^'sms, 

 The tale of cosmic elemental passion. 

 Thou tellest to a kindred soul." 



