Part 14 (1/2)

Out by the valiant Light, Out by rocks where the young gulls lay-- And glad winds teach them flight!

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!

Out to the open sea!

O there's not in the world a way To feel so wildly free!

So, let her quiver! So, let her leap!

So, let her dance the foam!

All life else is a narrow keep, The sea alone is home!

GIVE OVER, O SEA!

Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana!

Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall, And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.

The years of your existence are unending.

The years of your unresting are forever.

The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his pa.s.sion, And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring, To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam.

So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you.

And tho it may often seem you have found the Way, Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild reincarnations, And again great life, pulsing and perilous, Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe, Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back to speech.

To utterance on all sh.o.r.es of the world Of things unutterable.

Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvana!

Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment; Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your priestly feet, That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds gently afloat, And with the wild flutter of gulls wildly mysterious.

Give over and call your winds again to join you!

O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted litanies, Call them and bid them say with you that life transcends retreat, And that, in the temple of its Immanence, There is no peace that does not spring daily from peacelessness, And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm.