his feet to reassure him, but, having ebbed, “the ¤erce old mother” only
cries for her “castaways.” The detritus thrown upon the barren shore and
the windrows of capriciously driven sand seem to mimic his sense of di-
vorcement from nature. He feels a tug-of-war between his “eternal self”
and “the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot”—grim indicators of
his quest to ¤nd meaning in an ostensibly meaningless universe. While
struggling against despair, unwilling to concede that his life is purpose-
less, he walks the desolate shore “with that eternal self of me, seeking
types” and “likenesses,” which are his spiritual counterparts, analogs of
what he labeled the “vast similitude that interlocks all” and that he later
calls “eidolons.”^26 But he remains “fascinated” (that is, hypnotized) and
depressed by his grim surroundings, still seeking a clue to con¤rm his
hope that his life is meaningful. But nature offers no intelligible clue. The
“impalpable” sea breeze seems devoid of inspirational af®atus. The sea’s
“dirge” sounds like “the voices of men and women wrecked.” He feels
spiritually dead, “baf®ed, balked... oppressed with myself that I have
dared to open my mouth,” and terri¤ed at the thought that the “blab” of
his “insolent” (later changed to “arrogant”) poems may not have ema-
nated from his true self. Like a Byronic hero, he cries out that nature is
“taking advantage” of him, that the winds are mocking him with their
“distant ironical laughter... till I fall helpless upon the sand... because
I was assuming so much, / And because I have dared to open my mouth
to sing at all.” Unable to understand anything he sees or touches, he is
reduced to seeking a kinship with the sea’s lowly “bubbles” and the “little
washed-up drift of the sea.”
Brought to the verge of existential death by his crisis of faith in this
seemingly inert world of nature’s castoffs—a world of virtual death—he
is almost willing to concede that nature’s awesome powers and seeming
uncaringness have defeated him. Yet he cannot do so, for he feels a kin-
ship even with these “lowliest shreds,” these “little corpses” of the sea’s
jetsam. He cannot bring himself to surrender, for he sees these “elemental
drifts” or “types” as “likenesses” of himself, sharing the divinity that exists
within him and inspiring his faith in a meaningful universe. And so he
utters a childlike prayer to be permitted once again to hear the clear voice
of nature:
You oceans both! You tangible land! Nature!
Be not too rough with me—I submit—I close with you,
These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all.^27140 / “So Long!”