These restless surges eat away the shores
Of earth’s old continents; the fertile plain
Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down,
And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets
Of the drowned city.
He conveys the idea not only of spaciousness but of endless duration in the lines describing the coral worm laying his ‘mighty reefs,’ toiling from ‘age to age’ until
His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check
The long wave rolling from the southern pole
To break upon Japan.
Certain lines in ‘A Forest Hymn’ are also remarkable for the sense they give of vast reaches of time, stretching not forward but backward into eternity:—