“I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through many a long, long summer day on its clear waters.

“I have learned the ‘various language’ of Nature, of which poetry has spoken,—­at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it.  I will translate some of these as I best may into common speech.

“The ocean says to the dweller on its shores:—­

“You are neither welcome nor unwelcome.  I do not trouble myself with the living tribes that come down to my waters.  I have my own people, of an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill the air or move over the thin crust of the earth.  Who are you that build your palaces on my margin?  I see your white faces as I saw the dark faces of the tribes that came before you, as I shall look upon the unknown family of mankind that will come after you.  And what is your whole human family but a parenthesis in a single page of my history?  The raindrops stereotyped themselves on my beaches before a living creature left his footprints there.  This horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is of older lineage than your Adam,—­perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as one of his descendants.  What feeling have I for you?  Not scorn, not hatred,—­not love,—­not loathing.  No!—–­indifference,—­blank indifference to you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather absence of feeling, as regards you.—–­Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I will cool you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong arms, I will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his cradle.  Am I not gentle?  Am I not kind?  Am I not harmless?  But hark!  The wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates!  What do you say to my voice now?  Do you see my foaming lips?  Do you feel the rocks tremble as my huge billows crash against them?  Is not my anger terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?—­No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding indifference,—­that is all.  Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside.  All changes around me; I change not.  I look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses:  I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her nuptial raiment for the shroud.

“Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side.  Continents and islands grow old, and waste and disappear.  The hardest rock crumbles; vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being, wax great, decline, and perish, to give way to others, even as human dynasties and nations and races come and go.  Look on me!  “Time writes no wrinkle” on my forehead.  Listen to me!  All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I have only one language:  the winds taught me their vowels the crags and the sands schooled me in my rough or