Once a great storm rode up, even as far as London, out of the sea from the
South; and he came curving into the river with the fierce East wind. And
he was mightier than the dreary tides, and went with great leaps over the
listless mud. And all the sad forgotten things rejoiced, and mingled with
things that were haughtier than they, and rode once more amongst the
lordly shipping that was driven up and down. And out of their hideous home
he took my bones, never again, I hoped, to be vexed with the ebb and flow.
And with the fall of the tide he went riding down the river and turned to
the southwards, and so went to his home. And my bones he scattered among
many isles and along the shores of happy alien mainlands. And for a
moment, while they were far asunder, my soul was almost free.

Then there arose, at the will of the moon, the assiduous flow of the tide,
and it undid at once the work of the ebb, and gathered my bones from the
marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the mainland's shores,
and went rocking northwards till it came to the mouth of the Thames, and
there turned westwards its relentless face, and so went up the river and
came to the hole in the mud, and into it dropped my bones; and partly the
mud covered them, and partly it left them white, for the mud cares not for
its forsaken things.

Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead eyes of the houses and the jealousy
of the other forgotten things that the storm had not carried thence.

And some more centuries passed over the ebb and flow and over the
loneliness of things for gotten. And I lay there all the while in the
careless grip of the mud, never wholly covered, yet never able to go free,
and I longed for the great caress of the warm Earth or the comfortable lap
of the Sea.