Sand Dunes by Robert Frost
Smooth Between Sea and Land by A. E. Housman
Smooth between sea and land Is laid the yellow sand, And here through summer days The seed of Adam plays. Here the child comes to found His umemaining mound, And the grown lad to score Two names upon the shore. Here, on the level sand, Between the sea and land, What shall I build or write Against the fall of night? Tell me of runes to grave That hold the bursting wave, Or bastions to design For longer date than mine. Shall it be Troy or Rome I fence against the foam, Or my own name, to stay When I depart for aye? Nothing: too near at hand, Planing the figure sand, Effacing clean and fast Cities not built to last And charms devised in vain, Pours the confounding main.
SEA HISTORY 138, SPRING 2012
Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die, Rise others vaster yet, And those are brown and dry. They are the sea made land To come at the fisher town, And bury in solid sand The men she could not drown. She may know cove and cape, But she does not know mankind If by any change of shape, She hopes to cut off mind. Men left her a ship to sink: They can leave her a hut as well; And be but more free to think For the one more cast-off shell. ... And for those landsmen who get the opportunity to go on their first sea journey, it's a feeling of exultation, a feeling that those left onshore will never understand and one that those who work on the sea have long forgotten.
Exultation is the Going by Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going Of an inland soul to sea, Past the houses, past the headlands, Into deep eternity! Bred are we, among the mountains, Can the sailor understand The divine intoxication Of the first league out from land.
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