Ancestral Night

THESE wet rocks where the tide has been,

Barnacled white and weeded brown

And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,

These wet rocks where the tide went down

Will show again when the tide is high

Faint and perilous, far from shore,

No place to dream, but a place to die,—

The bottom of the sea once more.

There was a child that wandered through

A giant’s empty house all day,—

House full of wonderful things and new,

But no fit place for a child to play.

Think of ancestral night that can,

If but imagination scorn the earth

And intellect is wandering

To this and that and t’other thing,

Deliver from the crime of death and birth.