.
To Fall or Run (Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 29 September 2012
O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,
Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
Walt Whitman: from As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life, 1881, first published as Bardic Symbols in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1860
Toward Seaview (Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 22 July 2011
The Raging Sea (Darnley Beach, Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 13 July 2013
Salacia (Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 6 December 2013
Where the Ocean Began (Darnley Beach, Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 15 June 2013
North Wind (Darnley Beach, Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island): photo by Jim Rohan, 10 March 2011
Big Ocean #2: photo by Jim Rohan, 31 January 2012
Nelson Island #11 (Rowley, Massachusetts): photo by Jim Rohan, 29 January 2014