Tide-Water.

Through many-winding valleys far inland,     A maze among the convoluted hills,     Of rocks up-piled, and pines on either hand,     And meadows ribbanded with silver rills,     Faint, mingled-up, composite sweetnesses     Of scented grass and clover, and the blue     Wild-violet hid in muffling moss and fern,     Keen and diverse another breath cleaves through,     Familiar as the taste of tears to me,     As on my lips, insistent, I discern     The salt and bitter kisses of the sea.     The tide sets up the river; mimic fleetnesses     Of little wavelets, fretted by the shells     And shingle of the beach, circle and eddy round,     And smooth themselves perpetually: there dwells     A spirit of peace in their low murmuring noise     Subsiding into quiet, as if life were such     A struggle with inexorable bound,     Brief, bright, despairing, never over-lept,     Dying in such wise, with a sighing voice     Breathed out, and after silence absolute.     Faith, eager hope, toil, tears, despair,--so much     The common lot,--together over-swept     Into the pitiless unreturning sea,     The vast immitigable sea.     I walk beside the river, and am mute     Under the burden o fits mystery.     The cricket pipes among the meadow grass     His shrill small trumpet, of long summer nights     Sole minstrel: and the lonely heron makes     Voyaging slow toward her reedy nest     A moving shadow among sunset lights     Upon the river's darkening wave, which breaks.     Into a thousand circling shapes that pass     Into the one black shadow of the shore.     O tranquil spirit of the pervading test     Brooding along the valleys with shut wings     That fold all sentient and inanimate things     In their entrenched calm for evermore,     Save only the unquiet human soul;     Hear'st thou the far-off sound of waves that roll     In sighing cadence, like a soul in pain,     Hopeless of heaven or peace, beating in vain     The shores implacable for some replies     To the dumb anguish of eternal doubt,     (As I, for the sad thoughts that rise in me):     Feel'st thou upon thy heavy-lidded eyes     The salt and bitter kisses of the sea;     And dost thou draw, like me, a shuddering breath     Among dusk shadows brooding silently?     Ah me, thou hear'st me not: I walk alone.     The doubt within me, and the dark without,     In my sad ears, the waves' recurrent moan,     Sounds like the surges of the sea of death,     Beating for evermore the shores of time     With muttered prophecies, which sorrow saith     Over and over, like a set slow chime     Of funeral bells, tolling remote, forlorn,     Dirge-like the burden--"Man was made to mourn."