Free from the intrusion of littleness,
Standing on the shores of our great Western Sea,
My groping thoughts, O sea,
Now grapple with thy tempestuous waves.
My ecstatic soul argues with thy gales for an interpretation
of the message flowing clean and strong from the
"million-acred meadows" of the out-lying seas.
My straining ear listens to the clamorous, reiterating almost
uninvokable voice of thy tides.
For able to speak to man, like brooks and flowers,
I am inquiring, what you are about, the knowledge of your
place in the amelioration of the world?
* * * * *
And lo, now nature's cord is struck,
The secret word is caught,
And this is what I hear
As again I plead, "thou are not a purposeless, lifeless
plangent deep.
O great sea, who's purpose doest thou fulfill?
What are thou almightily about, what doing?"
* * * * *
"Doing!" seems to murmur its sustained voice with its rhythmic
storming of my soul,
"Doing! I am doing what man is doing, what the nations are
evolving, what the eternal, creative spirit living within
me is urging,
I am resolutely moving--crest, wave, tide and ponderous deep
in sympathy with world harmony, toward democracy.
Moving from ponderous deep, tide, wave and crest toward
distant lands.
Eager--so providenced--to carry to all pagan shores,
The ships, the statesmen and the life giving trade winds of
democracy."
* * * * *
"It is true, astonishingly," I said,
"Yes now I sense it and I feel it.
And what an unconquerable will, what a purpose!
The very shores, they tremble with its resolution,
For with man even the seas are sympathically for freemen
at work!"
* * * * *
And then looking outward and skyward, the God of our sea
going fathers, the spirit of the very God of Hosts, awoke
this stronger message to my thought:
"Fear not, O sons of Pilgrims
For the waters engulfed not Columbus' freemen when they
sailed a shoreless sea,
Nor was the Mayflower immeshed in the black jaws of an angry
deep.
And yours are ships of fate!
He who omnipotently palms the oceans pilots them.
To let them pass--O ships--to bear them safely on,
The tides, the storms and the winds are stayed.
* * * * *
"Move on, move on befriended by an illimitable peace.
Move on, move on to every slave desecrated shore!
Move on, the harmless, but forward momentum of these tides
will take you on and on.
For the Creator worketh hitherto and they must work.
For He hath given "to the sea His decree."
Move on to Hindu, Confucian and Teutonic shores.
O ships of freemen, sail on!"
"Winnow me through with thy keen, clean breath
Wind with tang of the sea."
--Ketchum.