The Voice of Things

Forty years—aye, and several more—ago, When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza’d like a multitude below, In the sway of an all-including joy Without cloy. Blankly I walked there a double decade after, When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter At the lot of men, and all the vapoury Things that be. Wheeling change has set me again standing where Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide; But they supplicate now—like a congregation there Who murmur the Confession—I outside, Prayer denied.