Amphibian
1.
The fancy I had to-day,
Fancy which turned a fear!
I swam far out in the bay,
Since waves laughed warm and clear.
2.
I lay and looked at the sun,
The noon-sun looked at me:
Between us two, no one
Live creature, that I could see.
3.
Yes! There came floating by
Me, who lay floating too,
Such a strange butterfly!
Creature as dear as new:
4.
Because the membraned wings
So wonderful, so wide,
So sun-suffused, were things
Like soul and naught beside.
5.
A handbreadth over head!
All of the sea my own,
It owned the sky instead;
Both of us were alone.
6.
I never shall join its flight,
For naught buoys flesh in air.
If it touch the sea—goodnight!
Death sure and swift waits there.
7.
Can the insect feel the better
For watching the uncouth play
Of limbs that slip the fetter,
Pretend as they were not clay?
8.
Undoubtedly I rejoice
That the air comports so well
With a creature which had the choice
Of the land once. Who can tell?
9.
What if a certain soul
Which early slipped its sheath,
And has for its home the whole
Of heaven, thus look beneath,
10.
Thus watch one who, in the world,
Both lives and likes life’s way,
Nor wishes the wings unfurled
That sleep in the worm, they say?
11.
But sometimes when the weather
Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free one’s self of tether,
And try a life exempt
12.
From worldly noise and dust,
In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought,—why, just
Unable to fly, one swims!
13.
By passion and thought upborne,
One smiles to one’s self—“They fare
Scarce better, they need not scorn
Our sea, who live in the air!”
14.
Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky,
We substitute, in a fashion,
For heaven—poetry:
—
St. 14. for: instead of.
15.
Which sea, to all intent,
Gives flesh such noon-disport
As a finer element
Affords the spirit-sort.
16.
Whatever they are, we seem:
Imagine the thing they know;
All deeds they do, we dream;
Can heaven be else but so?
17.
And meantime, yonder streak
Meets the horizon’s verge;
That is the land, to seek
If we tire or dread the surge:
— St. 17. We can return from the sea of passion and thought, that is, poetry, or a deep spiritual state, to the solid land again, of material fact.
18.
Land the solid and safe—
To welcome again (confess!)
When, high and dry, we chafe
The body, and don the dress.
— St. 18. Man, in his earth life, cannot always be “high contemplative”, and indulge in “brave translunary things”; he must welcome again, it must be confessed, “land the solid and safe”. “Other heights in other lives, God willing” (‘One Word More’).
19.
Does she look, pity, wonder
At one who mimics flight,
Swims—heaven above, sea under,
Yet always earth in sight?
— St. 19. does she: the “certain soul” in 9th St., “which early slipped its sheath”.