Whether he is looked at by ants or by angels, every outer token that pertains to man is absurd and unfinished until some inner thing is put with it. Man himself is futile and comic-looking (to the other animals), rushing empty about space. New York is a spectacle for a squirrel to laugh at, and, from the point of view of a mouse, a man is a mere, stupid, sitting-down, skull-living, desk-infesting animal. All these things being true of expression--both the expression of men and of God--the fact that machines which have poetry in them do not express it very well does not trouble me much. I do not forget the look of the first ocean-engine I ever saw--four or five stories of it; nor do I forget the look of the ocean-engine's engineer as in its mighty heart-beat he stood with his strange, happy, helpless "Twelve thousand horse-power, sir!" upon his lips. That first night with my first engineer still follows me. The time seems always coming back to me again when he brought me up from his whirl of wheels in the hold to the deck of stars, and left me--my new wonder all stumbling through me--alone with them and with my thoughts. The engines breathe. No sound but cinders on the sails And the ghostly heave, The voice the wind makes in the mast-- And dainty gales And fluffs of mist and smoking stars Floating past-- From night-lit funnels. In the wild of the heart of God I stand. Time and Space Wheel past my face. Forever. Everywhere. I alone. Beyond the Here and There Now and Then Of men, Winds from the unknown Round me blow Blow to the unknown again. Out in its solitude I hear the prow Beyond the silence-crowded decks Laughing and shouting At Night, Lashing the heads and necks Of the lifted seas, That in their flight Urge onward And rise and sweep and leap and sink To the very brink Of Heaven. Timber and steel and smoke And Sleep Thousand-souled A quiver, A deadened thunder, A vague and countless creep Through the hold, The weird and dusky chariot lunges on Through Fate. From the lookout watch of my soul's eyes Above the houses of the deep Their shadowy haunches fall and rise --O'er the glimmer-gabled roofs The flying of their hoofs, Through the wonder and the dark Where skies and waters meet The shimmer of manes and knees Dust of seas... The sound of breathing, urge, confusion And the beat, the starlight beat Soft and far and stealthy-fleet Of the dim unnumbered trampling of their feet. II ON BEING BUSY AND STILL