A Midsummer Holiday

IX
ON THE VERGE

"Here begins the sea that ends not till the world’s end.

Where we stand,

Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond

these waves that gleam,

We should know what never man hath known,

nor eye of man hath scanned...

Ah, but here man’s heart leaps, yearning towards the

gloom with venturous glee,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it,

set in all the sea."

Algernon Charles Swinburne