and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

Life holds not an hour that is better to live in:
the past is a tale that is told,
The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep,
with a blessing in store.
As we give us again to the waters, the rapture
of limbs that the waters enfold
Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby,
though the burden it quits were sore,
Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will
are absorbed in the life they adore--
In the life that endures no burden, and bows not
the forehead, and bends not the knee--
In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven,
in the laws that atone and agree,
In the measureless music of things, in the fervour
of forces that rest or that roam,
That cross and return and reissue, as I
after you and as you after me
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids
and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply
the heart of a man may be bold
To rejoice in the word of the sea as a mother's
that saith to the son she bore,
Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit
the breath in thy lips from of old?
Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength,