You, you are all unloving, loveless, you;
Restless and lonely, shaken
by your own moods,
You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even,
Threshing your own passions
with no woman for
the threshing-floor,
Finishing your dreams for your own sake
only,
Playing your
great game around the world, alone,
Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to
cherish,
No one to
comfort, and refusing any comforter.
Not like the earth, the spouse all full of
increase
Moiled
over with the rearing of her many-mouthed young;
You are single, you are
fruitless, phosphorescent,
cold and callous,
Naked of worship, of love or of
adornment,
Scorning the panacea even of labour,
Sworn to a high and splendid
purposelessness
Of
brooding and delighting in the secret of life’s goings,
Sea, only you are free,
sophisticated.
You who toil not, you who spin not,
Surely but for you and your
like, toiling
Were
not worth while, nor spinning worth the
effort!
You who take the moon as in a sieve, and
sift
Her flake by
flake and spread her meaning out;
You who roll the stars like jewels in your
palm,
So that they
seem to utter themselves aloud;
You who steep from out the days their
colour,
Reveal the
universal tint that dyes
Their web; who shadow the sun’s great
gestures
and
expressions
So
that he seems a stranger in his passing;
Who voice the dumb night
fittingly;
Sea,
you shadow of all things, now mock us to
death with your
shadowing.
BOURNEMOUTH