The sea is in its listless chime:
Time's lapse it is, made audible,--
The murmur of the earth's large shell.
In a sad blueness beyond rhyme
It ends: sense, without thought, can pass
No stadium further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
No stagnance that death wins,--it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Always enduring at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.