THE SHIP AND THE SEA
The sea is gemm’d with her, the sun’s wide eye
Brightens all day on her, and when night comes,
The stars mount up her rigging, the moon slips
White feet upon her sharply-shadow’d decks,
And, in her towers of steady sail high-sitting,
Quietly sings the wind.
More: she herself, this world amid, convoys
Another world, and other. Sound of lips
And light of eyes, a burden of warm breath
And hearts toward other hearts that beat, is come
Upon the emptiness—a world of quick,
Doing, devising Consciousness usurps
This kingdom of untroubled one-ness—plays
Its sole pulsating part in this huge O
Of unspectator’d theatre . . . and then
As in its entry, in its exit, brief—
Vanishes. The ship passes and is gone.
A rushing star, thro’ Heaven’s capacious calm
Down-hurling momentary fire: a swift
Passion, that strong on some commanding spirit
Leaps . . . fastens . . . fails: or, an importunate fly
That, loud about its little business,
One drowsy second of the summer noon
Awakes, the next falls dead: invading so
So takes possession, so predominates,
And even so is pass’d the ship, and gone.
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