REUBEN
At ebb-tide, from the foreshore spring, to dip
Out of the strength of seaweed-cover’d rocks,
Sweet water for the household, and bear home,
Crystal to see and crystal cool to hear,
The radiant sheen, lip-lipping two grey pails:
After high storms to rove the beach, and rout
The wind-rows, Pilot following, not for wood
And useful wreckage only, but the joy,
The curious joy, in-knit with human roots,
Of search itself: nay, if nought else he cull’d,
Tidings this travell’d débris of the waves
Never refused to give him, news far-come
Of strange sea-lives, of man’s vicissitudes,
The wide world yonder, and the deep world here:
To mark the moon and chronicle the tides:
On blue and dulcet afternoons, to couch
In some warm elbow of the cliff, that holds
A bight of spreaded sea; and there for hours,
In Pilot’s panting company, to watch
The untir’d Deep travelling toward him, huge, alive,
Wonderful! one great drop of sapphire glow
Shimmering and shoaling like a peacock’s neck
To richest purple, azure and pure green,
Barr’d here and there with shafts of lustre, shot
Down by some high white cloud:
To mark the gulls,
Sweeping so sure and easy thro’ the deep
Ravine of air, or toward the Blue above
The flash of bright white light beneath their wings
Upbearing, while their restless and hoarse cry
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