November Surf

Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are drawn Like smoking mountains bright from the west And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then suddenly The old granite forgets half a year's filth: The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots Of dung in corners of the rock, and used Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings of the summer Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy: I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all seasons The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep, Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long coast Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines: The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more numerous, The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains The dignity of room, the value of rareness.