Distant vessels, and the far-off, just visible
trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer; more plainly, ships, brigs,
schooners, in sight, most of them with every sail set to the firm and
steady wind.
The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore! How one
dwells on their simplicity, even vacuity! What is it in us, arous'd by
those indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-white
beach, salt, monotonous, senseless--such an entire absence of art,
books, talk, elegance--so indescribably comforting, even this winter
day--grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual--striking emotional,
impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music,
I have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is
because I have read those poems and heard that music.)
SEA-SHORE FANCIES
Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps a
poem, about the sea-shore--that suggesting, dividing line, contact,
junction, the solid marrying the liquid--that curious, lurking
something, (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the
subjective spirit,) which means far more than its mere first sight,
grand as that is--blending the real and ideal, and each made portion
of the other. Hours, days, in my Long Island youth and early manhood,
I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney island, or away east to
the Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter place, (by the old
lighthouse, nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction as
far as the eye could reach,) I remember well, I felt that I must one
day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme.
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