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The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific--
Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, clash of
     faiths--
Is a speck of dust on the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland
     plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke
Into pale sea--look west at the hill of water: it is half the
     planet:
     this dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antartica: those are the eyelids that never
     close;
     this is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.

Added: 16 Jan 2002 | Last Read: 7 Nov 2009 7:12 PM | Viewed: 6216 times

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