But what is the sea? How can we know the sea? Is it water, space, depth? Can we measure it in miles, in the days required to traverse it, in steamship lines, by the turning of the screws, or by the system of the fourth dimension? To me who have been round the greatest sea on earth comes the realization that I have seen only a narrow line of it, and that I can only believe that the rest is what it has been said to be. Yet my faith is founded on my knowledge of the faithfulness of the sea.
The sea, we sometimes say, has its moods, but rather should they be called enthusiasms. It is really not the sea at all to which we refer, but to something which in the vague world of infinitude is in itself a sea whipping the surface of an unfathomable wonder. The sea's moods are not in its breakers, any more than is the surface phenomenon which floors the region between our atmosphere and ether, the story of our earth. We cannot reach down beneath the breakers and learn the secret of the heart of the sea. In ourselves, as in the sea, we obtain a record of that tremendous silence which is the harbinger of all sound, as the heavens are of all color.
One day in New Zealand I witnessed a conflict between the earth and the sea. A tremendous wind swept north-westward, and pressed heavily down upon the shore. It sent the sand scurrying back into the sea. Even the breakers, like the sand, fell back in furious spray like the waves of sea-horses,—back into the ocean. The entire length of the beach for three miles was alive with retreating spray, mingled with the bewildered sand-legions scurrying at my ankles.
One night, on the shores of Otago Harbor, the moon, blasted and blunted by heavy clouds, had started on its journey. In a little cave huddled a cloud of black night. We had spread the faithful embers of our camp fire so they could not touch one another, and wanting touch they died in the darkness. We had put the curse of loneliness upon each of them. The little cave had become only a darker spot on a dark landscape,—a landscape so rough, so rare and rugged, reaching the sea and the western sky of night. So rough, so unformed, so uncompleted. The maker of lands was beating against it impatiently, rushing it, forming it. What uncanny projections, what sandy cliffs! For ages the wind and sea have been whipping them into shape. Yet man could remove them with a blast or two. For thousands of miles, all round the rim of the great Pacific, the same process is going on, day and night. While upon land, man has continued working out his mission in the same persistent, unconscious manner.
O Maker of lands' ends, O Sea, when will man be formed? When will the conflicts among men cease? They have tried to curb one another and to subject one another to slavish uses, even and kempt. But still, after ages of whipping and lashing, they are still unfinished as though never to be formed. Are the various little groups which lie so far apart, scattered by some ancient camper, to die for want of the touch of comrade, like those embers in the darkness of that empty cavelet?
Here round the Pacific we dwell, each in his own little hollow. May not this vast, generous ocean become the great experiment station for human commonalty, for distinction without extinction? The dreams that centered in the other great seas—the Mediterranean, the Atlantic—were only partially fulfilled. But here at the point where East is West, it ought to be possible, because of the very obvious differences, to maintain relations without irritating encroachment. There was a time when passionate desire justified a man taking a woman from another with the aid of a club. To-day the decent man knows that however much he may love, only mutual consent makes relationship possible. And from the frenzy of untutored souls let those who feel repugnance withdraw till the force of a higher morality makes the rest of the world follow in its wake.
... now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain:
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.