Six Sea Songs

Furred with frost, beside the path, 
Little poles of grass conduct 
The foot along. Here leaves lie flattened 
Clammy brown, with whitened veins, 
Here a stream, unfrozen still, 
Crosses the path, and tumbles straight 
Into the bushes.  After that you round a bend 
And the sudden sea displayed
Ripples in the sudden sunlight, 
Miles on glittering miles of light,
Scattered back to the sky; 
Looking like laughter to the eye, 
Raising feelings like laughter in the heart. 
The sea whose currents lick 
Round continents, and flow 
Underneath the ice-capped pole, 
Raise storms of wind 
In sleepy coves, and hurl blue tons 
Of water on the rocks, 
Now in the winter sun 
Coils sparkling, and makes laughter seem 
The rule and truth of things, 
Makes sunlight and laughter seem the truth 
And rule of things for ever. 

Along the concrete esplanade
Protected by a balustrade
      From the inclement sea,
      People walk in pairs
      Under their parasols;
And groups of three or four or five 
With buckets, spades and coloured balls
        Approach the sandy spot,
      Undress and sun themselves,
      Or search about for shells, 
Until the town-clock chimes for tea; 
Then up they rise and turn their backs
      On the mysterious sea. 
In railway-stations everywhere 
Gaudy hordings advertise
      Where bathing beauties may
  Display their feminine charms
      Attended by young handsomes.
Behind, the strings of coloured lights,
Bandstands, refreshment booths and palms
      Imply a gracious life,
      Where one may sit and dine;
      While far away the sea 
Stretches a long line into 
A part-loved, part-feared, part-desired
      Unknown infinity.

On a soft shelving sandbank, to his waist in the water, 
A child leaps delighted with dolphinish gasps. 
His body and limbs, caressed by the liquid, 
Are a world in themselves of warmth and delight. 
Brightness like lightning beside him flashes 
A hoop of silver circling him round. 
Ducking down under, he rises and throws up 
Sparks and sparkles into the air, 
Till splintering sun-streaks fall down in a shower, 
Himself in the midst shaking them off. 
He shakes them off, and the memory, with them,
Flashing, outflashes its death in time. 

In springtime the flowers of the seaside like the flowers of the woods
Start the year with perfection. First primroses nestle in the sun:
They overlook a bay 
Where eider-duck are flapping and playing, cooing like pigeons. 
Next pink thrift 
Crowns the whole top of a rock sea-surrounded: 
Blue waves and white foam 
Curl far below. In summertime viper's bugloss, 
Party-coloured and bristly, 
Stands erect among the sandhills in groups, like soldiers in coloured uniforms
Sweltering in the heat, 
Till a damp haar and cold wind shakes them, and shakes too the heads 
Of sea-lavender in the rock-chinks, 
And golden samphire, glowing in the very teeth of the misty wind. 
As summer wears on 
And far into the autumn, along the borders of shingly beaches, 
Yellow horned poppy 
Branches and extends its jointed stems and hoary leaves; 
And sea-holly, powdery 
Blue-grey-green, of strange and mystical appearance.

You watery sands half hidden in mists, 
Where the gull paddles, and the squirting lugworm burrows, 
Where grey lights from the clouds make long lines to the shore, 
Where the solitary cockleshell lies, and the broken basket's ribs 
Cradle the limp corpse of a crab, what do you mean to man?
Melancholy, the wreck of all being, silence, sorrow, desertion.

Down there is darkness such as never 
Was on the surface of the earth, 
And gulfs steeper than the steepest cliff-falls 
Among the most giddying mountain heights. 
Red clay and blue mud line its crevasses, 
And millions and millions of little shells,
The remains of little lives, extinguished, 
Forgotten as if they had never been.
Fittingly the sea is a symbol of eternity, 
Where things are lost to sight, and inaccessible 
To thought. There even the relics 
Of humanity can be but a sparse scattering. 
And of what value to itself or another
Is the huge immovable creature 
Lying at the very bottom of the ocean, and waving 
A faint luminosity to attract its prey?