John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures,
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents,
the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly;
for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams,
somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls,
lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds;
the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld,
must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost
waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms.
The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California towns,
but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded
but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham;
while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless,
unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious,
divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all
coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth.
Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god,
bowing your head to Pan.
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