The Sea by D.H. Lawrence

You, you are all unloving, loveless, you; / Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods, / You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even, / Threshing your own passions with no woman for / the threshing-floor,

Finishing your dreams for your own sake only, / Playing your great game around the world, alone, / Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to / cherish,

No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.

Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase / Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed / young;

You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent, / cold and callous,

Naked of worship, of love or of adornment, / Scorning the panacea even of labour, / Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness

Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life's / goings,

Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.

You who toil not, you who spin not, / Surely but for you and your like, toiling / Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the / effort!

You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift / Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out; / You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm, / So that they seem to utter themselves aloud; / You who steep from out the days their colour, / Reveal the universal tint that dyes / Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures / and expressions

So that he seems a stranger in his passing; / Who voice the dumb night fittingly; / Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to / death with your shadowing.

BOURNEMOUTH