And Yet Not You Alone

And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,Nor you, ye lost designs alone--nor failures, aspirations;I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again--duly the hinges turning,Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,All throbs, dilates--the farms, woods, streets of cities--workmen at work,Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing--steamers’ pennantsof smoke--and under the forenoon sun,Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily theinward bound,Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself,In every crest some undulating light or shade--some retrospect,Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral,The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead,Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand,My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble--somewave, or part of wave,Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.

Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.