Classic Poem

I KNOW your heart, O Sea!
You are tossed with cold desire to flood earth utterly;
You run at the cliffs, you fling wild billows at beaches,
You reach at islands with fingers of foam to crumble them;
Yes, even at mountain tops you shout your purpose
Of making the earth a shoreless circle of waters!

I know your surging heart!
Tides mighty and all-contemptuous rise within it,
Tides spurred by the wind to champ and charge and thunder—
Though the sun and moon rein them—
At the troubling land, the breeding-place of mortals,
Of men who are ever transmuting life to spirit,
And ever taking your salt to savour their tears.

I know your tides, I know them!
‘Down,’ they rage, ‘with the questing of men, and the crying!
With their continents—cradles of grief and despair!
Better entombing waters for them, better our deeps unfathomed,
Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death toll-less for all,
And where dark ooze enshrouds past resurrection!’

Ah, yes, I know your heart!
I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to reveal you,
I have watched it foam at ships that sought to defy you,
I have seen it straining at cables that cross you, bearing whispers hid to you,
Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your hurricanes.
I know, I know your heart!
Men you will sink, and shores will sink; but a shore shall be man's for ever,
From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal the Infinite,
Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing their unknown burden
To a Port which only eternity shall determine!