SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS
Under the sea, which is their sky, they rise
To watery altitudes as vast as those
Of far Himàlayan peaks impent in snows
And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.
Under the sea, their flowing firmament,
More dark than any ray of sun can pierce,
The earthquake thrust them up with mighty tierce
And left them to be seen but by the eyes
Of awed imagination inward bent.
Their vegetation is the viscid ooze,
Whose mysteries are past belief or thought.
Creation seems around them devil-wrought,
Or by some cosmic urgence gone distraught.
Adown their precipices chill and dense
With the dank midnight creep or crawl or climb
Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime,
Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse
Life of a miscreative impotence.
About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats,
In the thick azure far beneath the air,
Or downward sweeps upon what prey may dare
Set forth from any silent weedy lair.
But one desire on all their slopes is found,
Desire of food, the awful hunger strife,
Yet here, it may be, was begun our life
Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes
In unevolved obscurity were bound.
Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet
It matters not how we were wrought or whence
Life came to us with all its throb intense
If in it is a Godly Immanence.
It matters not,—if haply we are more
Than creatures half-conceived by a blind force
That sweeps the universe in a chance course:
For only in Unmeaning Might is met
The intolerable thought none can ignore.
THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS
Come over the tide,
Come over the foam,
Dance on the hurricane, leap its waves,
Dream not of the calm sea-caves
Nor of content in them and home.
For that is the reason the hearts of men
Are ever weary—they would abide
Somewhere out of the spumy stride
Of the world's spindrift—a want denied.
That is the reason: tho they know
That the restive years have no true home,
But only a Whence, Whither, and When—
Whence and Whither, for hearts to roam.
So who would tarry and rest the while,
Not dance as we, and sing on the wind,
Against the whole flow of the world has sinned,
And soon is weary and cannot smile.
Dance then, dance, on the fleeting spray!
None can gather eternity
Into his heart and bid it stay,
Swiftly again it slips away.
Dance, and know that the will of Life
Is the wind's will and the will of the tide,
And who finds not a home in its strife
Shall find no home on any side!