Reuben and Other Poems/Brighton Front
BRIGHTON FRONT
Spew’d forth in fell array
’Gainst yon accusing presence of pure Even,
Look where the town’s thick volley of foul breath
Hits and besmirches Heaven,
And spurs the dying day
Unto its death.
The lamps fling out their long straight miles of glare,
But, upon stealthy feet,
Fog walks the street:
Coil’d round by whose chill hands, each troubled flare,
Paled, penn’d, bereft of rays,
Confusedly betrays,
But cannot lift, the burden of the air;
Nor the gilt shops, blindfold for all their blaze,
Illumine can the dulness and the daze,
Or light the listless eyes that in them gaze.
Yet still the mire-thick road
Re-echoes, the hoarse cries
Fight one another;
Carriages thud along toward revelries,
And, fain of nothings, jewell’d and in rags,
Deaf by dumb brother,
Prick’d by Vacuity’s unsparing goad,
Man thrusts and presses o’er the clanking flags.
O, is the city clean forgot of Peace?
Can nothing put the spangled squalor by,
And bid the futile buzzing tension cease?
Ah, then, to escape the unvaluable strife!
To front large issues, and achieve release
From this mad flow of triviality
This ebb of life!
Look! look! another light!
Listen! another voice!
Forget the street—
Turn, and with lampless and oft-stumbling feet
O’er layer’d nets outspread,
Past patient keels that keep
Dumb witness to the Deep,
And over the untrack’d sharp shingle tread
Whither the quiet calling summoneth.
The thick loud town to left of us and right,
Forth! Face the lonely sea, the wide bare night,
And once again draw breath.
Deep, vast and free,
Absolute, naught between,
Reigns overhead Heaven’s right immensity!
Life on this landward salty air doth sit
Quickening it:
Veil-less the moon: far spread the shining sea!
Here is clean outlook, here doth no lie come,
No littleness abide,
Here freedom yet retains her ancient home,
Beauty here issues freshly from the foam,
And the Soul’s wings are wide.
O ever-breathing Breast,
Re-inspire me!
O Energy unresting, give me rest!
Succour me, O strong Sea!
Hark . . . hark . . . ! The billow rises,
The billow breaks,
The sea calls,
And my heart awakes!
O my heart!
We, beach’d so high on this world’s huckster strand,
Might we at last in truth the mooring slip,
And out upon wide water like a ship
Launch forth and leave the land,—
Flee the staled air, the loud and empty life,
The little lights, with the great Light of Heaven
Pretentiously at strife!
Scarce would we then be fain of any goal,
For any haven sigh!
Content, awhile, ’twixt heaven and earth to lie
Unscreen’d, and fenceless fly
Unholden winds before.
While the great voice of sheer Infinity,
Voice of a Soul and speaking to the Soul,
For aye should speak around us, and (the shore
Wiped wholly out, the offing far and free),
Strong and with full-spread sails we might explore,
With keel enfranchis’d, way uncheck’d, range o’er
Some huge uncharted Sea!