“Mourn on, mourn on, O solitary sea I love to hear thy moan, The world’s mixed cries attuned to melody In thy undying tone. Lo, on the yielding sand I lie alone, And the white cliffs around me draw their screen, And part me from the world. Let me disown For one short hour its pleasure and its spleen, And wrapt in dreamy thought, some peaceful moments glean.”
T
The tide is coming in; the waves are big enough to be called waves, yet they break upon the shelving shore from a perfectly calm sea. And the long ranks rise and fall at my feet, curving and breaking in endless succession; line after line sent forth by the stern mandate of General Ocean, to die each in his turn upon the impregnable rampart of the Land. Ever since the third day of Creation has this assault been protracted, now by craft, now with the thunder of artillery and the violence of the storm; although it be really so hopeless that186 the balance of things remains about as it was at the beginning. If the armies of the Sea have made a breach here, fresh earthworks have been thrown up in another place by its stubborn antagonist, and the interminable strife remains equal still.
But the solemn Sea forbids longer trifling; and its oppressive vastness, and melancholy murmur, and mysterious whisper of ever born and ever dying waves, own, surely, some grave meaning.
“The earnest sea, Which strives to gain an utterance on the shore, But ne’er can shape unto the listening hills The lore it gathered in its awful age—”
it seems to demand an interpreter. Let it be my mood to disentangle some of its utterances. Let me employ this hour of thought upon the lonely shore, in guessing at the meaning of the voice of the long lines which ever bow to the ground before me with eastern salaam, and then retire, having delivered their message.
“The sea approaches, with its weary heart Mourning unquietly; An earnest grief, too tranquil to depart, Speaks in that troubled sigh; Yet the glad waves sweep onward merrily, For hope from them conceals the warning tone, Gaily they rush toward the shore—to die. All their bright spray upon the bare sand thrown, How soon they learn their part in that old ceaseless moan!”
Yes, this well-worn lesson shall be the first that the waves shall teach us—the vanity and disappointment of human aspirations and early hopes and dreams. See now how glad187 and gleeful and bright and energetic they come on, twinkling with a myriad laugh, line behind line, eager ridge chasing eager ridge; all setting towards the cold sullen shore of the unsympathetic earth. Oh the clear pure curve, and the unsullied transparency; and the glancing crest of feathers and diamonds, and the rainbow tints as at last the longed-for shore is reached, and the eager plunge made! Oh the dis-illusion, the broken enchantment, the check, the change, the fall, when the white glittering spray lies now, lost and sullied and broken, upon the defiling earth; and the wave—amazed, daunted, shattered, quickly changing from over-hope to over-despair—flees back with a wild cry to the great Sea. Another and another and another, the warning is not taken; it is true that earth scattered this bright hope, this strong purpose, this brave design, this gleaming ambition; it is true that the yellow sands have been busy, ever since the Fall, inviting and then defeating the eager waves; receiving, marring, and sucking in the trembling snowy spray, the rainbow-tinged bubble dreams that the heart lavished upon them; and changing joyous onsets into moaning retreats. Yet who will expect the young heart to believe in the destiny of all its mere earth-dreams, so long as, within it, the tide is coming up? You almost smile, though with no scorn, to hear that momentary despairing sigh. For you stand now on a point from which you can see a seemingly exhaustless and endless array of ever-new schemes, and hopes, and fancies, and purposes, and ambitions and dreams, line chasing line, towards that magic disenchanting shore. Those behind cry “Forward!” Vain for those before to cry “Back!” Yea, themselves soon pick up their broken forces, and swell the188 energy and join in the advance of the crested lines that chase one another to the shore.
This, then, is to me one lesson of the waves coming in. Human aspirations and dreams, advancing gaily in youth, awhile seeming to make some progress; but learning at high tide that they have but been conquering unprofitable tracts of barren sand. Then yielding ground inch by inch, losing their grasp of the world and relinquishing the very lust thereof; and spoiled, and stained, and marred, and with a very heart-moan, sinking to low ebb as life turns. Was not this Solomon’s story? Wave after wave dancing to the shore, curve after curve breaking eagerly upon it, scheme after scheme, toil after toil, pleasure after pleasure, hope after hope, ambition after ambition, dream after dream; the eye is bewildered and dizzied with the ceaseless motion, the steady endless advance of the gay and crested waters—“Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy: for my heart rejoiced in all my labour.” It was gladdening, exhilarating, exciting to see the flashing battalions of earthward plans, and earthward dreams, pressing each close upon each, to the inexorable, impassive line of rocks or sand—what matter that here one shattered with a crash against a cruel blunt crag, and fled with a scream, and that another left its light and beauty trembling and sinking into the sand, while itself slunk back with a hollow sigh; what matter these single and insignificant experiences of the vanity of things mundane, while there was yet a whole rising tide of wildly eager waters, coming in fast, fast, exhaustless, infinite, flashing and gleaming and dancing in189 the sun? On, gaily on, and what if some die? Are there not myriads to follow! Why heed the waste, amid youth’s profusion?
But a pause comes over all the glad onset; a stagnant time, a period of neither advance nor retreat: the tide is at the full. You mark no change for awhile either way: then at last a space of wet sand begins to border the line of dying spray. Broadening and broadening; but it was quite enough that it had once begun. The tide has turned. Here is “the check, the change, the fall.” An eager strife, a wild race, an190 impetuous advance, a profuse and uncalculating spending all youth’s energies, and purposes, and powers, and aspirations; an excited resistless march. And with what result? An unprofitable and transitory conquest of a narrow track of barren sand.
Oh draw off, draw off your broken forces, defeated in that they were victorious; disappointed by the very fact of attainment; steal back with that heart-sigh of “Vanity, vanity, vanity: all is vanity,”—back into the deep sea again! Leaving, it is true, the colour, and the light, and the gladness, and the purity; the crested spray, the diamond drops, the rainbow gleam; all lying wrecked and sucked in by the hungry shore. Leaving the spoils of youth, yet glad anyhow to get away; for what can equal the bitterness of that moment when the tide, long sluggish, begins at last to turn?
“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”
No,—and the bitter thought is, that not the missing, but the attaining the prize, has disappointed; not failure, but success, has embittered: and that it might have been known from the very first that thus it must be—that the coveted possession was but lifeless rock or bare sand. There was a warning voice to this effect, but, oh, who heard or heeded it in that glorious advance of the long battalions of battling gleaming waters? And, to add bitterness to the cup, this was all an old story; we were not, as we dreamed, invading new worlds; no, those ancient sands have borne the furrows of myriads upon myriads191 of just such excited, eager, leaping tides. The anguish has not even the pathos of novelty; it is actually commonplace. That which seemed so new to us, at what more than millionth hand we received it!
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
“Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.”
And so hark to the moan of the waves as they draw off, when the tide has turned, and the disenchantment has come, sigh after sigh, moan upon moan, in the weary and desolate retreat. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” Yes; and farther on, a more bitter wail, as it passes back over some spot where some of the gayest morning hopes were spilt: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Lower and lower yet, with yet duller and heavier moan: “What hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.” And now an almost fierce and angry cry: “Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
And what then? Is this the end of all? Is there no hope for the wailing tide; no redemption for the scattered spray?
I have seen what has seemed to me a sweet and touching answer to this q............