Atavism
I leant out over a ledging cliff and looked down into the sea,
Where weed and kelp and dulse swayed, in green translucency;
Where the abalone clung to the rock and the star-fish lay about,
Purpling the sands that slid away under the silver trout.
And the sea-urchin too was there, and the sea-anemone.
It was a world of watery shapes and hues and wizardry.
And I felt old stirrings wake in me, under the tides of time,
Sea-hauntings I had brought with me out of the ancient slime.
And now, as I muse, I cannot rid my senses of the spell
That in a tidal trance all things around me drift and swell
Under the sea of the Universe, down into which strange eyes
Keep peering at me, as I peered, with wonder and surmise.