FROM A NORTHERN BEACH

Is it because for a million years

The tide has entered here

From cold north seas

Where ice-floes freeze

That ever unto my ear

Primordial loneness in its voice

Comes telling of that time

When life was not, upon the earth,

But only glacier-rime?

Is it because these granite rocks

I share with weed and scurf

Were held so long

By the ice-throng

That now they take the surf

So selflessly and soullessly,

As if God's Immanence

Had been pressed from them, never more

To enter, with sweet sense?

And is it because I, too, evolved

From ice and sea and shore,

Can understand

How life has spanned

The lifeless ages o'er,

That as I sit here, suddenly

The tide again seems stilled

And earth beneath a great white pall

Again lies changed and chilled?

So it must be — ah, so; for soft

Within my muted brain

The heritage

Of age on age

Reverberates again.

Wherefore when glacial Silence comes

With Death shall I emerge

From that as from the frozen Past,

Under Life's endless urge?