The Atheist

Over a scurf of rocks the tide Wanders inward far and wide, Lifting the sea-weed's sloven hair, Filling the pools and foaming there, Sighing, sighing everywhere.

Merged are the marshes, merged the sands, Save the dunes with pine-tree hands Stretching upward toward the sky, Where the sun, their god, moves high: Would I too had a god--yea, I!

For, the sea is to me but sea, And the sky but infinity. Tides and times are but some chance Born of a primal atom-dance. All is a mesh of Circumstance.

In it there is no Heart--no Soul-- No illimitable Goal-- Only wild happenings, by wont Made into laws no might can shunt From the deep grooves in which they hunt.

Wings of the gull I watch or claws Of the cold crab whose strangeness awes: Faces of men that feel the force Of a hid thing they call life's course: It is their hoping or remorse.

Yet it may be that I have missed Something that only they who tryst, Not with the sequence of events But with their viewless Immanence, Find and acclaim with spirit-sense.