Man of absolute physical equilibrium
You stand so straight on your legs
Every plank or clod you plant your feet on
Becomes roots for those limbs

Among the men you accrete to yourself
You are more heavy
And more light
Force being most equitably disposed
Is easiest to lift from the ground
So at the same time
Your movements
Unassailable
Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet
The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée
Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links

Your projectile nose
Has meddled in the more serious business
Of the battle-field
With the same incautious aloofness
Of intense occupation
That it snuffles the trail of the female
And the comfortable
Passing odors of love

Your genius
So much less in your brain

Than in your body
Reinforcing the hitherto negligible
Qualities
Of life
Deals so exclusively with
The vital
That it is equally happy expressing itself
Through the activity of pushing
THINGS
In the opposite direction
To that which they are lethargically willing to go
As in the amative language
Of the eyes

Fundamentally unreliable
You leave others their initial strength
Concentrating
On stretching the theoretic elastic of your conceptions
Till the extent is adequate
To the hooking on
Of any— or all
Forms of creative idiosyncracy
While the occasional snap
Of actual production
Stings the face of the public.

There are certain things—as, a spider, a ghost,
   The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three—
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
   Is a thing they call the Sea.

Pour some salt water over the floor—
   Ugly I’m sure you’ll allow it to be:
Suppose it extended a mile or more,
   That’s very like the Sea.

Beat a dog till it howls outright—
   Cruel, but all very well for a spree:
Suppose that he did so day and night,
   That would be like the Sea.

I had a vision of nursery-maids;
   Tens of thousands passed by me—
All leading children with wooden spades,
   And this was by the Sea.

Who invented those spades of wood?
   Who was it cut them out of the tree?
None, I think, but an idiot could—
   Or one that loved the Sea.

It is pleasant and dreamy, no doubt, to float
   With ‘thoughts as boundless, and souls as free’:
But, suppose you are very unwell in the boat,
   How do you like the Sea?

There is an insect that people avoid
   (Whence is derived the verb ‘to flee’).
Where have you been by it most annoyed?
   In lodgings by the Sea.

If you like your coffee with sand for dregs,
   A decided hint of salt in your tea,
And a fishy taste in the very eggs—
   By all means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
   You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
   Then—I recommend the Sea.

For I have friends who dwell by the coast—
   Pleasant friends they are to me!
It is when I am with them I wonder most
   That anyone likes the Sea.

They take me a walk: though tired and stiff,
   To climb the heights I madly agree;
And, after a tumble or so from the cliff,
   They kindly suggest the Sea.

I try the rocks, and I think it cool
   That they laugh with such an excess of glee,
As I heavily slip into every pool
   That skirts the cold cold Sea.