"Mutters and ebbs"

"For water, for the deep where the high tide

Mutters to its hurt self, mutters and ebbs.

Waves wallow in their wash, go out and out,

Leave only the death-rattle of the crabs,

The beach increasing, its enormous snout

Sucking the ocean’s side.

This is the end of running on the waves;

We are poured out like water. Who will dance

The mast-lashed master of Leviathans

Up from this field of Quakers in their unstoned graves? "

 

 

--Stanza IV of "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" by Robert Lowell

Done