For, the sea is to me but sea,
And the sky but infinity.
Tides and times are but some chance
Born of a primal atom-dance.
All is a mesh of Circumstance.
In it there is no Heart—no Soul—
No illimitable Goal—
Only wild happenings, by wont
Made into laws no might can shunt
From the deep grooves in which they hunt.
Wings of the gull I watch or claws
Of the cold crab whose strangeness awes:
Faces of men that feel the force
Of a hid thing they call life's course:
It is their hoping or remorse.
Yet it may be that I have missed
Something that only they who tryst,
Not with the sequence of events
But with their viewless Immanence,
Find and acclaim with spirit-sense.
AT THE HELM
(Nova Scotia)
Fog, and a wind that blows the sea
Blindly into my eyes.
And I know not if my soul shall be
When the day dies.
But if it be not and I lose
All that men live to gain—
I who have known but heaving hues
Of wind and rain—
Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.