Still is the sunset afloat as a ship on the waters upholden
  Full-sailed, wide-winged, poised softly for ever asway—­
Nay, not so, but at least for a little, awhile at the golden
  Limit of arching air fain for an hour to delay. 
Here on the bar of the sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming
  Waste of the water without, waste of the water within,
Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming
  Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. 
Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover,
  Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: 
Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover
  Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. 
Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward
  Heaven, as eastward quicken the paces of star upon star
Hurried and eager of life as a child that strains to the breast-ward
  Eagerly, yearning forth of the deeps where the ways of them are,
Glad of the glory of the gift of their life and the wealth of its wonder,
  Fain of the night and the sea and the sweet wan face of the earth. 
Over them air grows deeper, intense with delight in them:  under
  Things are thrilled in their sleep as with sense of a sure new birth. 
But here by the sand-bank watching, with eyes on the sea-line, stranger
  Grows to me also the weight of the sea-ridge gazed on of me,
Heavily heaped up, changefully changeless, void though of danger
  Void not of menace, but full of the might of the dense dull sea. 
Like as the wave is before me, behind is the bank deep-drifted;
  Yellow and thick as the bank is behind me in front is the wave. 
As the wall of a prison imprisoning the mere is the girth of it lifted: 
  But the rampire of water in front is erect as the wall of a grave. 
And the crests of it crumble and topple and change, but the wall is not
          broken: 
  Standing still dry-shod, I see it as higher than my head,
Moving inland alway again, reared up as in token
  Still of impending wrath still in the foam of it shed. 
And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder,
  High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark,
And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder
  Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark. 
Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under
  Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore: 
A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky’s wonder
  Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted floor. 
And the large lights change on the face of the mere like things that were
          living,
  Winged and wonderful, beams like as birds are that pass and are free: 
But the light is dense as darkness, a gift withheld in the giving,
  That lies as dead on the fierce dull face