The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders Out of the slack, the slow west Sombering its torch; a ship's light Shows faintly, far out, Over the weight of the prone ocean On the low cloud. Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood, Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river, Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow, Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining. Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always, And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite, A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter, Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is immortal. Far off from here the slender Flocks of the mountain forest Move among stems like towers Of the old redwoods to the stream, No twig crackling; dip shy Wild muzzles into the mountain water Among the dark ferns. O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the fretfulness Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars. This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens, The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children, The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far glimmer Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the Bedouins Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs tempted Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a measure of continuance. The tide, moving the night's Vastness with lonely voices, Turns, the deep dark-shining Pacific leans on the land, Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins: you Night will resume The stars in your time. O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward? Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus, Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence. The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness. And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill, Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg, The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark. And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor. Have men's minds changed, Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul Broken the surface? A few centuries Gone by, was none dared not to people The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations. But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier, And death is no evil.