Reuben and Other Poems/The Ship and the Sea
THE SHIP AND THE SEA
Day after day, thro’ following night on night,
Whether ’twixt Blue and Blue, amid grey calm,
Tempest, or chill disconsolating fog—
Still thro’ void air, ’neath one continuing dome
Of mute enormous sky—o’er plain on plain
Of lonely, stark, uninterrupted sea—
From circle to repeated circle of
Mere space for ever changing, aye unchanged:
Voyages on her solitary way
The strong sea-worthy ship.
And she informs that void. The solitude
She peoples, and to all that blank gives point.
Her single presence wakes as to an aim,
Touches, as tho’ to sense, the occupants
Of that insensate world. The leashless waves
Race at her side and follow at her heel:
The virgin and clean air dwells in her sails,
And seabirds, none know whence, sudden appearing,
Hover, as round their mother, at her helm.
The sea is gemm’d with her, the sun’s wide eye
Brightens all day on her, and when night comes,
The stars mount up her rigging, the moon slips
White feet upon her sharply-shadow’d decks,
And, in her towers of steady sail high-sitting,
Quietly sings the wind.
More: she herself, this world amid, convoys
Another world, and other. Sound of lips
And light of eyes, a burden of warm breath
And hearts toward other hearts that beat, is come
Upon the emptiness—a world of quick,
Doing, devising Consciousness usurps
This kingdom of untroubled one-ness—plays
Its sole pulsating part in this huge O
Of unspectator’d theatre . . . and then
As in its entry, in its exit, brief—
Vanishes. The ship passes and is gone.
A rushing star, thro’ Heaven’s capacious calm
Down-hurling momentary fire: a swift
Passion, that strong on some commanding spirit
Leaps . . . fastens . . . fails: or, an importunate fly
That, loud about its little business,
One drowsy second of the summer noon
Awakes, the next falls dead: invading so
So takes possession, so predominates,
And even so is pass’d the ship, and gone.
She passes. And the indifferent world resumes
Its ancient semblance, and its own device.
Voiceless once more, unpeopled and alone,
One vast monotony magnificent,
The air, the sea, and the infinite sky
Are all—The heart-throbs and the busy minds
Are gone, and wordless comes the wind, the light
No longer sees itself in human eyes,
Nor watch of man is set upon this world.
Nevertheless, it lives, and has its being.
The wind blows on, the sky presides, the sea
Her ageless journeying round the earth pursues,
And onward all the untrodden currents flow.
Man come or gone, ’tis equal. Nature still
Remains, and still the stable elements
Fill their inherent office. Sweet with salt
The free air wanders o’er the wandering waves,
Bright shines the sun upon the shipless sea.