waves and gray-white beach
salt, monotonous, senseless
subtler than poems
The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore!
How one dwells on their simplicity, even vacuity!
What is it in us, arous’d by those indirections and directions?
That spread of waves and gray-white beach, salt, monotonous, senseless —
such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance —
so indescribably comforting, even this winter day —
grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual — striking emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read, seen, heard.
(Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read those poems and heard that music.)
From A Winter Day on the Sea-beach by Walt Whitman as published in Complete prose works: Specimen days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy by Walt Whitman (D. Appleton and Co: New York and London, 1910).
No Haiku For You 