2 + 

As I wend to the shores I know not, + 

As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d, + 

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, + 

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, + 

I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift, + 

A few sands and dead leaves to gather, + 

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. + 

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Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, + 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. + 