New Zealand Verse/The Ship and the Sea
XLVIII.
The Ship and the Sea.
Day after day, thro’ following night on night,Whether ’twixt Blue and Blue, amid gray calm,Tempest, or chill disconsolating fog—Still thro’ void air, ’neath one continuing domeOf mute enormous sky—o’er plain on plainOf lonely, stark, uninterrupted sea—From circle to repeated circle ofMere space for ever changing, aye unchanged:Voyages on her solitary wayThe strong seaworthy ship.
And she informs that void. The solitudeShe peoples, and to all that blank gives point.Her single presence wakes as to an aim,Touches, as tho’ to sense, the occupantsOf that insensate world. The leashless wavesRace at her side and follow at her heel:The virgin and clean air dwells in her sails,And sea-birds, none know whence, sudden appearing, Hover, as round their mother, at her helm.The sea is gemm’d with her, the sun’s wide eyeBrightens all day on her, and when night comes,The stars mount up her rigging, the moon slipsWhite feet upon her sharply-shadow’d decks,And, in her towers of steady sail high-sitting,Quietly sings the wind.
More: she herself, this world amid convoysAnother world, and other. Sound of lipsAnd light of eyes, a burden of warm breathAnd hearts toward other hearts that beat, is comeUpon the emptiness—a world of quick,Doing, devising Consciousness usurpsThis kingdom of untroubled oneness—playsIts sole pulsating part in this huge OOf unspectator’d theatre . . . and thenAs in its entry, in its exit, brief—Vanishes. The ship passes and is gone.
A rushing star, thro’ Heaven’s capacious calmDown-hurling momentary fire: a swiftPassion, that strong on some commanding spiritLeaps—fastens—fails: or, an importunate flyThat, loud about its little business,One drowsy second of the summer noonAwakes, the next falls dead: invading so,So takes possession, so predominates,And even so is pass’d the ship, and gone.
She passes. And the indifferent world resumesIts ancient semblance, and its own device.Voiceless once more, unpeopled and alone,One vast monotony magnificent,The air, the sea, and the infinite sky Are all—the heart-throbs and the busy mindsAre gone, and wordless comes the wind, the lightNo longer sees itself in human eyes,Nor watch of man is set upon this world.
Nevertheless, it lives, and has its being.The wind blows on, the sky presides, the seaHer ageless journeying round the earth pursues,And onward all the untrodden currents flow.Man come or gone, ’tis equal. Nature stillRemains, and still the stable elementsFill their inherent office. Sweet with saltThe free air wanders o’er the wandering waves,Bright shines the sun upon the shipless sea.