Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.
Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Sea-Limits , 1828 - 1882
Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The ec ho of the whole sea’s speec h
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in e ach.
Like the sigh of a maiden in lone despair,
...
Such, such are the sounds of the wild sea shell
...
Ac ross my ear like the tones of woe,
It soundeth to me
Like the voice of the sea,
And swee t is its mournful melody.
...
Like a holy hymn
Of nymphs in deep devotion.
 |