Forty Augusts—aye, and several more—ago,
    When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,
The waves huzza'd like a multitude below
    In the sway of an all-including joy
        Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
    When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,
And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter
    At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
        Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where
    Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;
But they supplicate now—like a congregation there
    Who murmur the Confession—I outside,
         Prayer denied.