The Eye

The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,

The blue pool in the old garden,

More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice

Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific—

Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.

Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs

Nor any future world-quarrel of westering

And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, clash of

    faiths—

Is a speck of dust on the great scale-pan.

Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland

    plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke

Into pale sea—look west at the hill of water: it is half the

    planet:

    this dome, this half-globe, this bulging

Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,

Australia and white Antartica: those are the eyelids that never

    close;

    this is the staring unsleeping

Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.