THE ATHEIST

Over a scurf of rocks the tide Wanders inward far and wide, Lifting the sea-weed's sloven hair, Filling the pools and foaming there, Sighing, sighing everywhere. Merged are the marshes, merged the sands, Save the dunes with pine-tree hands Stretching upward toward the sky, Where the sun, their god, moves high: Would I too had a god—yea, I! For, the sea is to me but sea, And the sky but infinity. Tides and times are but some chance Born of a primal atom-dance. All is a mesh of Circumstance. In it there is no Heart—no Soul— No illimitable Goal— Only wild happenings, by wont Made into laws no might can shunt From the deep grooves in which they hunt. Wings of the gull I watch or claws Of the cold crab whose strangeness awes: Faces of men that feel the force Of a hid thing they call life's course: It is their hoping or remorse. Yet it may be that I have missed Something that only they who tryst, Not with the sequence of events But with their viewless Immanence, Find and acclaim with spirit-sense.