Is It Love? Is It Hate?

Is it Love, is it Hate, this clasp by the sea of the land, Entangling, swaying, revolving, escaping, past to the strand; Escaping, yet never escaped, never utterly gone from reach; Which is it? I ask and would know, as I watch at hand, Here on the beach.

To-night they seem weary of warfare, these ancient foes, Weary of love as of hate; of eddying kisses or blows; Even as we, as I, grow weary of eddying thought, Of the waves of the mind, of the soul and its foam-like woes, Rising unsought.

The sea’s mood to-night has changed, has grown simple and mild It draws in the land to its breast as a nurse draws a child, It sings it a song wrought out of the moan of the beach, Of the sough of the wind, of the tales of the waste and the wild, Older and stranger than speech.