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| As I ebb'd with the ocean of life, |
| As I wended the shores I know, |
| As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, |
| Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, |
| Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, |
| I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, |
| Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, |
| Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, |
| The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the |
| land of the globe. |
| |
Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow |
| those slender windrows,
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| Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, |
| Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the |
| tide, |
| Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, |
| Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, |
| These you presented to me you fish-shaped island, |
| As I wended the shores I know, |
| As I walk'd with that electric self seeking types. |
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| 2 |
| |
| |
| As I wend to the shores I know not, |
| As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd, |
| As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, |
| As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, |
| I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift, |
| A few sands and dead leaves to gather, |
| Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. |
| |
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth, |
| Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, |
| Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I |
| have not once had the least idea who or what I am, |
| But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet |
| untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd, |
| Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and |
| bows, |
| With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written, |
| Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath. |
| |
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single |
| object, and that no man ever can, |
| Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart |
| upon me and sting me, |
| Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. |
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| 3 |
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| You oceans both, I close with you, |
| We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing |
| not why, |
| These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. |
| |
| You friable shore with trails of debris, |
| You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot, |
| What is yours is mine my father. |
| |
| I too Paumanok, |
| I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been |
| wash'd on your shores, |
| I too am but a trail of drift and debris, |
| I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. |
| |
| I throw myself upon your breast my father, |
| I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, |
| I hold you so firm till you answer me something. |
| |
| Kiss me my father, |
| Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love, |
| Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring |
| I envy. |
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| |
| 4 |
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| |
| Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) |
| Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, |
| Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, |
| Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you |
| or gather from you. |
| |
| I mean tenderly by you and all, |
| I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we |
| lead, and following me and mine. |
| Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses, |
| Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, |
| (See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, |
| See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,) |
| Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, |
| Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another, |
| From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, |
| Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, |
| Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, |
| A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, |
| drifted at random, |
| Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, |
| Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets, |
| We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out |
| before you, |
| You up there walking or sitting, |
| Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet. |
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