Lxvii

So with this wash o' the world, wherein lifelong we drift; We push and paddle through the foam by making shift To breathe above at whiles when, after deepest duck Down underneath the show, we put forth hand and pluck At what seems somehow like reality--a soul. I catch at this and that, to capture and control, Presume I hold a prize, discover that my pains Are run to naught: my hands are balked, my head regains The surface where I breathe and look about, a space. The soul that helped me mount? Swallowed up in the race O' the tide, come who knows whence, gone gayly who knows where! I thought the prize was mine; I flattered myself there. It did its duty, though: I felt it, it felt me; Or, where I look about and breathe, I should not be. The main point is--the false fluidity was bound Acknowledge that it frothed o'er substance, nowise found Fluid, but firm and true. Man, outcast, "howls,"--at rods?-- If "sent in playful spray a-shivering to his gods!" Childishest childe, man makes thereby no bad exchange. Stay with the flat-fish, thou! We like the upper range Where the "gods" live, perchance the dæmons also dwell: Where operates a Power, which every throb and swell Of human heart invites that human soul approach, "Sent" near and nearer still, however "spray" encroach On "shivering" flesh below, to altitudes, which gained, Evil proves good, wrong right, obscurity explained, And "howling" childishness. Whose howl have we to thank. If all the dogs 'gan bark and puppies whine, till sank Each yelper's tail 'twixt legs? for Huntsman Common-sense Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense Quiet i' the kennel; taught that ocean might be blue, And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too, Its touch of God's own flame, which he may so expand, "Who measurèd the waters i' the hollow of his hand," That ocean's self shall dry, turn dewdrop in respect Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect Once fairly matched; bade him who egged on hounds to bay, Go curse, i' the poultry yard, his kind: "there let him lay" The swan's one addled egg: which yet shall put to use, Rub breast-bone warm against, so many a sterile goose!