Classic Poem

For how long known this boundless wash of light,
This smell of purity, this gleaming waste,
This wind? This brown, strewn wrack how old a sight,
These pebbles round to touch and salt to taste.

See, the slow marbled heave, the liquid arch,
Before the waves' procession to the land
Flowers in foam; the ripples' onward march,
Their last caresses on the pure hard sand.

For how long known these bleaching corks, new-made
Smooth and enchanted from the lapping sea?
Since first I laboured with a wooden spade
Against this background of Eternity.