Hillmen desire their hills !
This poem is certainly one of the most magnificent descriptions of the sea ever. It depicts the sea through all her moods and changes. Every word is measured and accurate: for example, the four stages in the formation and breaking of a wave are described with great precision by the line,
“The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded …”
It is curious to use the sea for describing the hills, but effective. When I was trekking through the hill country of Western Nepal – wave upon green wave of hills rising gradually to the white breakers of the Himalayas on the horizon – the line kept coming back to my mind:
“So and no otherwise – so and no otherwise – hillmen desire their Hills!”
The Sea and the Hills
Who hath desired the Sea? - the sight of salt water unbounded - The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing - Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing - His Sea in no showing the same - his Sea and the same 'neath each showing: His Sea as she slackens or thrills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills! Who hath desired the Sea? - the immense and contemptuous surges? The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bowsprit emerges? The orderly clouds of the Trades, the ridged, roaring sapphire thereunder - Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail's low-volleying thunder (1) His Sea in no wonder the same - his Sea and the same through each wonder: His sea as she rages or stills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills. Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies? The in-rolling walls of the fog and the silver-winged breeze that disperses? The unstable mined berg going South and the calvings and groans that declare it (2) White water half-guessed overside and the moon breaking timely to bare it (3) His Sea as his fathers have dared - his Sea as his children shall dare it: His Sea as she serves him or kills? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills. Who hath desired the Sea? Her excellent loneliness rather Than forecourts of kings, and her outermost pits than the streets where men gather Inland, among dust, under trees - inland where the slayer may slay him - His Sea from the first that betrayed - at the last that shall never betray him: His Sea that his being fulfils? So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise - hillmen desire their Hills.
Notes
[1] ‘Flaws’ – gusts of wind.
[2] The iceberg drifting south from the Arctic, increasingly becoming “mined” as chunks (“calvings”) detach from it.
[3] ‘ White water’ – shoals.