If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented,
If I could kiss all the pebbles that ever there were,
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could drink all the waves as they break over there,
Should I then be contented?
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair?
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented?
We who are mourners make no moan
For the Body lost in the grave,
For the Soul is a shining wave
And the Body is but a stone
Dragged out in the under tow
And tossed by the waves to and fro,
And worn and tormented and cast
Back again on the rocks at last.
Ah, the body lost in the grave
Is freed from the tyrant soul,
Delivered from wind and wave.
Current and quicksand and shoal.
Freed from the cruel sea ... .
But the spirit is never free ....
There is no truce in that war
Of the tides that clash near the shore.
Gone--faded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember?
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign.
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle,
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea.
Never again will he come, with rings in his ears like a pirate,
Back to be living and seen, here with his roses and vines;
Here where the tenants are shadows and echoes of years uneventful,
Memory meets the event, told from afar by the sea.
Smoke that floated and rolled in the twilight away from the chimney
Floats and rolls no more. Wheeling and falling, instead,
Down with a twittering flash go the smooth and inscrutable swallows,
From the Past and Unavailing
Out of cloudland we are steering;
After groping, after fearing,
Into starlight we come trailing,
And we find the stars are true.
Still, O comrade, what of you?
You are gone, but we are sailing,
And the old ways are all new.
For the Lost and Unreturning
We have drifted, we have waited;
Uncommanded and unrated,
We have tossed and wandered, yearning
For a charm that comes no more
From the old lights by the shore:
We have shamed ourselves in learning
What you knew so long before.
The well-made sonnet takes the azure sea
Proud in her beauty as a halcyon,
Her timbers chosen words, and melody
Filling her sails of rhyme. She passes on
In majesty and calm, but these my lines
Are like a crazy and a leaky boat,
Clumsily made of warped and twisted pines
That hardly on the troubled waters float.
Now comes an arrogant great wave ahead
That swamps the blunted bow and spumes along ;
Into the storm I drift in doubt and dread,
Patient, not brave, enduring but not strong.
I know not on this huge and angry sea
How far my wretched ship can carry me.
From Amberley to Storrington,
From Storrington to Amberley,
From Amberley to Washington
You cannot see or smell the sea.
But why the devil should you wish
To see the home of silly fish ?
Since I prefer the earth and air,
The fish may wallow in the sea
And live the life that they prefer,
If they will leave the land to me,
So wish for each what he may wish,
The earth for me, the sea for fish.
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;
Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound
Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,--
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?
People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbor's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,--
Starting up in my inland bed,
Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,--
One salt taste of the sea once more?
These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down
Will show again when the tide is high
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,--
The bottom of the sea once more.
There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty house all day,--
House full of wonderful things and new,
But no fit place for a child to play.
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
A SCALLOP shell, loosed by the lifting tide,
Had left a friendly shore, the seas to brave ;
Its lips of pink and snowy hollow shone
Pure in the sun, a pearl upon the wave.
It gleamed and passed — you burdened it with love,
With sweet long futures, new and dreamy days :
And named for me — because I held your hopes.
I bid you hush — not meriting your praise.
I pointed, as your vessel came to shore,
Wrecked where the tiny breakers rose and fell ;
And bid your voyagers not put to sea
So frail a craft as this poor scallop shell.