O SEA, with white lines of foam caught by the winter sun, O pale blue transparent sky with wind, long stretches of coast faint-outlined, and waving grasses! How often to seek you, out of the pent life of custom and brick perspective, a boy I came, Filled with vague desires, hardly knowing what or wherefore—like thine, O restless sea and ceaseless blowing wind— Came to pour forth my soul to yours, ye beautiful creatures—sad, sad, longing yearning without end! Say, great sea—whose music continues to-day the same as then; O wonderful illimitable sky, the same; O grasses shivering just for all the world as now— Say, have you not given me, by strange ways, the thing that I sought? For now returning, Satisfied, filled to the full of all desires, grateful as a lake sparkling in the sunshine, Filled to the full, desiring yearning no more—faint only with joy and the fragrance of the love which distils from you— Upon you I look once more. Changed are your words; changed are your words O grasses and pale blue flowing winds, and yours ye streets and faces that pass along them! Changed are your words to me. I heard you—but it was as one that hears an unknown tongue; I thought I saw you, but I see that you deceived me. And now I do not know why I should ever make another move—what you say has entirely checkmated me. But to those that go forward, go ye ever forward before them; and to them that listen let your strange vocabulary continue. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BOSTON by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON THE FROGS: THE FROGS' SONG by ARISTOPHANES THE WOUNDED VULTURE by ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH BOTTA ARMELLE NICHOLAS'S ACCOUNT OF HERSELF by JOHN BYROM ODE: ON THE MESSIAH by NATHANIEL COTTON |