Wonderful as a bird in the float of the sunrise in the mountains
Is the sharp littleness, the sun-drinking solitude of the redeemed soul ...

Where there are rocks, and a shoulder of grassy Earth,
The solitary stands in the mountain morning,
Wind-kissed, facing the dawn ...

Here the sea-song is a forest-song
And here what flowed is solid ...

The solitary sings the song of deliverance ...

I drink the sun, who drank only bitter waters ...
I see hill, sky and grass, clear and chiselled out real by the strokes of the sun-rays ...
And I that tossed in floundering seas
Have earth and rock underfoot ...
Everything is solid as a stone
And my soul is solid as a stone ...

Littleness is a strong house to live in ...
It is a stone ...
A stone that no waters may wear away ...

From the mountains the seas have departed
For seas are at home only in abysses ...
Out of the seas of the Earth the mountains rise up
Shouting the song of freedom ...

I that was a sailor and a swimmer have become a mountaineer.

Gulf of heaven, blue pocket of the abyss,
Enveloping sun-arched sky whose impalpable dome melts in the twilight,
By dusk melted like a dusty blue cobweb,
And when the cobweb vanishes, a symbol of Eternity appears,
A star, and then a bridge of stars suspended between the piers of the universe,
And upward into the abyss man looks,
Standing on two legs against the turning lump of Earth
With upraised face against the wheeling of the worlds in unsheltered night ...
I, a man, stand as self-contained and solid in my littleness,
As you in your vastness ...

I am human,
You are Cosmos,
I would not change places with you: I would not be elsewhere: I dream of no past or future:
I accept the present moment, the present place and what I am ...

Standing on a hurried lump in the abyss,
I claim myself ...

This is the sea-fruit the ocean seeks ever to deliver from its womb ...
This is the child the mother yearned to bear ...
For wherefore the stormy passion of the whipped deep?
Wherefore the freedom-hunger in humanity?
What is the urge toward redemption? what is this terrible age-long cry for a saviour?
Why does the sea deliver the hills out of itself?
Why do they stand up, these rocks?
What is the meaning of the dry land and the peaks?

As the hills from the sea; so man from the sea ...

The sea rises up into rain, and the rain falls down again ...
But if the rain fall into the sea
It is only water falling on water ...
But the hills laugh as they take the rain in their faces,
And out of the hills come blossoms, grasses, flowers and fruit,
And nibbling wet mouths are glad of fresh Earth ...

The mountains are great
Because the sea does not come to them like a devouring monster
But comes to them only in the mercy of rain;
This is a gift of the sea to all that is delivered out of the sea ...
And so when the soul is delivered
The great sea sends spring rain over the soul ...

What was sea-water to the soul when it too was a wave of the sea?

But now it is of the mountains and when the sea comes to it on the wings of the clouds and dissolves upon it in rain
Like moist soil it drinks this mercy and feels the roots beginning to stir,
And the grass blades piercing, and the blossoms beginning to open ...
Now it knows the joy and copious loving motherhood of the sea
Which gives its free children the rain of plenty ...

And the soul in the distance beholds the blue sea among its capes,
And in the forest and in the grass and echoing far over the morning air
It hears the song eternal, the song of the sea ...

My song ends with the song of the sea ...
The song the sea sings untiringly on the shores of the world ...

One song, as the planet flies, rises unendingly from its lips,
And in that song the planet children are enfolded, and never go free of it,
And never desire to go free of it ...
For the soul hearing this song, trembles with music to its roots
And drinks the miracle drink. . . .

It is the song of the Mother forever near,
It is the song of the great Mother singing to her child ...
" O song, " sings the soul, " which first I heard in the neighboring heart-beats and blood pulses of my mother,
Song that shaped in my own brain which was a bay of the silver-clashing sea of the past,
Immemorial music that slips through the mother in the body of the child at the hour of birth,
And he carries it into the world, and he hears it in the world,
In the bodies of men and women, in the motions of nature,
In nations, and sky, and Earth, and ocean ...

Eternal song, eternal voice of the Mother ...
Malformed Mother, become beautiful and straight when the child finds freedom ...
Mother who loves the free ...
Mother who scourges slaves but walks like a comrade with the emancipated ...
Your song, Mother, sounds in my ears forever ...
And by your song and the song of my soul married like treble and bass, one strain, I live and I labor,
And out of your timeless wisdom I find my light,
And out of your power, my flame ... "

Cradle-song — voyage-song — grave-song of humanity ...
Song whose refrain is a promise, a new vision, a new symbol ...
Symbol of the complete human being
Whose coming in us all is the hope of the universe ...