He rose swiftly out of the waters, and shone across the bay, lighting
up all the mountains that closed in north and south. He came full of
promises, and after the coolness and damp of the night I had need of
heat. I lay on a bank and gleaned sunshine. The morning came over the
sea steadily, equably, like a good ship making for a sure harbour.
Then, ten miles from Gudaout, on a mountain, I looked out from the
ruins of the Tower of Iver, over a vast resplendent sea, and saw below
me the monastery of Novy Afon and all its buildings, looking like
children's toys. That tower was a stronghold of Christianity in
the third century, and it was strange to think that Crusaders and
mediaeval warriors had looked out from the same tower, over the same
glorious sea. Assuredly from the watch-tower of ancient Time all
buildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when I
rowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the site
of Colchis. That Black Sea and that river were the same which Jason
sailed with his heroes; and the Golden Fleece, those children's toy,
has now, forsooth, become a head-gear in these parts.
We all pass away, but the sea remains the same; and all our empires
and literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are proved
toys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our glorious
after-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in the
here and now. I shall never understand its secret.
A stage is reached when I cease to look at the sea, and allow the sea
to look into me, when I give it habitation in my being, and am thereby
proved, by virtue of my soul, something mightier than it.
But in vain do we try to take the sea's mystery by storm. In vain do
we search for its meaning with love. It lies beyond our mortal ken,
deeper than ever plummet sounded.
"Is not the sea the very peacock of peacocks?" asks Nietzsche. "Even
before the ugliest of all buffaloes it unfoldeth its tail and never
wearieth of its lace fan of silver and gold." But the sea is not moved
by slander. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!" sings
Byron in praise, but the sea is not encouraged. It hearkeneth not,
even unto kings. It is that which changes but is itself unchanged. It
manifests itself continually in change, and yet it is itself ever
the same, ever the same. It reveals itself to man in the majesty and
terror of storm, or in the joyousness of peace; when with leaden eye
it glowers upward at the leaden clouds, or when the rain sweeps over
it in misery. But the secret of the sea lies beyond all these, hidden
in the depths, profound, sublime.