Pre-Existence

  I laid me down upon the shore

    And dreamed a little space;

  I heard the great waves break and roar;

    The sun was on my face.

  My idle hands and fingers brown

    Played with the pebbles grey;

  The waves came up, the waves went down,

    Most thundering and gay.

  The pebbles, they were smooth and round

    And warm upon my hands,

  Like little people I had found

    Sitting among the sands.

  The grains of sands so shining-small

    Soft through my fingers ran;

  The sun shone down upon it all,

    And so my dream began:

  How all of this had been before;

    How ages far away

  I lay on some forgotten shore

    As here I lie to-day.

  The waves came shining up the sands,

    As here to-day they shine;

  And in my pre-pelasgian hands

    The sand was warm and fine.

  I have forgotten whence I came,

    Or what my home might be,

  Or by what strange and savage name

    I called that thundering sea.

  I only know the sun shone down

    As still it shines to-day,

  And in my fingers long and brown

    The little pebbles lay.

The Pelasgi were a people supposed to have inhabited Greece before the Greeks. ‘Pre-Pelasgian’ therefore refers to a very old, ancient time.