You sweep your eye along where the sky and water
meet, and it seems you can note the curvature of the earth. Maybe
it is that, and maybe it is all in your own eye. I am not saying.
There are good points, too, about the sea on a clear night when the
moon is full; or when there is no moon, and the phosphorescence in
the water shows, as if mermaids' children were playing with
blue-tipped matches. I like to see it when a gale is blowing, and
the white caps race. Yes, and when it is a flat calm, with here and
there a tiny cat's-paw crinkling the water into gray-green crepe.
And also when - but there! it is no use cataloguing all kinds of
weather and all hours of the day and night. What I don't approve of
in the ocean is its everlasting bigness. It is so discouraging. It
makes a body seem so no-account and insignificant. You come away
feeling meaner than a sheep-killing dog. "Oh, what's the use?"
you say to yourself. "What's the use of my breaking my neck to do
anything or be anybody? Before I was born - before History began
- before any foot of being that could be called a man trod these
sands, the waves beat thus the pulse of time. When I am gone - when
all that man has made, that seems so firm and everlasting, shall
have crumbled into the earth, whence it sprang, this wave, so
momentary and so eternal, shall still surge up the slanting beach,
and trail its lacy mantle in retreat .
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