This Much and More: III. How Like the Sea

How like the sea, the myriad-minded sea,

Is this large love of ours: so vast, so deep,

So full of mysteries! it, too, can keep

Its secrets, like the ocean; and is free,

Free, as the boundless main. Now it may be

Calm like the brow of some sweet child asleep;

Again its seething billows surge and leap

And break in fullness of their ecstasy.

Each wave so like the wave which came before,

Yet never two the same! Imperative

And then persuasive as the cooing dove,

Encroaching ever on the yielding shore—

Ready to take; yet readier still to give—

How like the myriad-minded sea, is love.