Canto 9To the Sea
Book 3. Part Three - Baroda and Bengal Circa 1900 – 1909
O grey wild sea,
Thou hast a message, thunderer, for me.
Their huge wide backs
Thy monstrous billows raise, abysmal cracks
5Dug deep between.
One pale boat flutters over them, hardly seen.
I hear thy roar
Call me, “Why dost thou linger on the shore
With fearful eyes
10Watching my tops visit their foam-washed skies?
This trivial boat
Dares my vast battering billows and can float.
Death if it find,
Are there not many thousands left behind?
15Dare my wide roar,
Nor cling like cowards to the easy shore.
Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900–1909
Come down and know
What rapture lives in danger and o’erthrow.”
20Yes, thou great sea,
I am more mighty and outbillow thee.
On thy tops I rise;
’Tis an excuse to dally with the skies.
I sink below
25The bottom of the clamorous world to know.
On the safe land
To linger is to lose what God has planned
For man’s wide soul,
Who set eternal godhead for its goal.
30Therefore He arrayed
Danger and difficulty like seas and made
Pain and defeat,
And put His giant snares around our feet.
The cloud He informs
35With thunder and assails us with His storms,
That man may grow
King over pain and victor of o’erthrow
Matching his great
Unconquerable soul with adverse Fate.
40Take me, be
My way to climb the heavens, thou rude great sea.
I will seize thy mane,
O lion, I will tame thee and disdain;
Or else below
45Into thy salt abysmal caverns go,
Receive thy weight
Upon me and be stubborn as my Fate.
I come, O Sea,
To measure my enormous self with thee.