To the Sea

To step over the low wall that divides / Road from concrete walk above the shore / Brings sharply back something known long before — / The miniature gaiety of seasides. / Everything crowds under the low horizon: / Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps, / The small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse / Up the warm yellow sand, and further off / A white steamer stuck in the afternoon — // Still going on, all of it, still going on! / To lie, eat, sleep in hearing of the surf / (Ears to transistors, that sound tame enough / Under the sky), or gently up and down / Lead the uncertain children, frilled in white / And grasping at enormous air, or wheel / The rigid old along for them to feel / A final summer, plainly still occurs / As half an annual pleasure, half a rite, // As when, happy at being on my own, / I searched the sand for Famous Cricketers, / Or, farther back, my parents, listeners / To the same seaside quack, first became known. / Strange to it now, I watch the cloudless scene: / The same clear water over smoothed pebbles, / The distant bathers’ weak protesting trebles / Down at its edge, and then the cheap cigars, / The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, between // The rocks, the rusting soup-tins, till the first / Few families start the trek back to the cars. / The white steamer has gone. Like breathed-on glass / The sunlight has turned milky. If the worst / Of flawless weather is our falling short, / It may be that through habit these do best, / Coming to water clumsily undressed / Yearly; teaching their children by a sort / Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.