From a Northern Beach
Is it because for a million years
The tide has entered here
From cold north seas
Where ice-floes freeze
That ever unto my ear
Primordial loneness in its voice
Comes telling of that time
When life was not, upon the earth,
But only glacier-rime?
Is it because these granite rocks
I share with weed and scurf
Were held so long
By the ice-throng
That now they take the surf
So selflessly and soullessly,
As if God’s Immanence
Had been pressed from them, never more
To enter, with sweet sense?
And is it because I, too, evolved
From ice and sea and shore,
Can understand
How life has spanned
The lifeless ages o’er,
That as I sit here, suddenly
The tide again seems stilled
And earth beneath a great white pall
Again lies changed and chilled?
So it must be—ah, so; for soft
Within my muted brain
The heritage
Of age on age
Reverberates again.
Wherefore when glacial Silence comes
With Death shall I emerge
From that as from the frozen Past,
Under Life’s endless urge?