House of falling leaves with other poems / William Braithwaite [electronic text]

OFF SHORE

LOOK out across the blue-green sea, Look thither where the blue glooms lie — Beyond the bourne of mystery, Between the sea-rim and the sky. Oh look— and look across the deep Sundering, indivisible flood — Secretive as the doom of sleep That falls on man's ancestral blood:

Look out and gaze from vanished eyes That longed for home from Tyrian ships; Look out from ruined destinies That burn behind the blood's eclipse; Look from the stare when Adam saw God spread Creation at his feet; As Moses, when the Stones of Law God gave him where the whirlwinds meet:

Look out across the blue-green sea, Look thither where the blue glooms lie —There still is Canute's mystery, And mocking Plato's inner eye. Oh look with Shakespeare's teeming brain, And look with Voltaire's biting scorn — Behold the sudden rush of rain — The miracle's unborn!