THE SEA-LIMITS. CONSIDER the sea's listless chime : Time's self it is, made audible,— The murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet, which is death's,-it hath As the world's heart of rest and wrath, 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. Gather a shell from the strown beach The echo of the whole sea's speech. And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each. |