sprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.

Tu te plais a plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous etes tous les deux tenebreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sonde le fond de tes abimes,
O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous etes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

Et cependant voila des siecles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitie ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
O lutteurs eternels, o freres implacables!

[Sidenote: _SEA-LARGENESS_]

The sea is never mean. Strife and brotherhood with it give a largeness
to men which, like all deep qualities of the spirit, can be neither
specified nor defined; only felt, and seen in the outcome. The
Seacombe fishermen are more or less amphibious; ocean-going seamen
look down on them. They are petty in some small things, notably in
jealousy lest one man do more work, or make more money, than another:
to say a man is doing well is to throw out a slur against him.
Nevertheless in the larger, the essential things of life, their
sea-largeness nearly always shows itself. They are wonderfully
charitable, not merely with money. They carp at one another, but let a
man make a mess of things, and he is gently treated. I have never
heard Tony admit that any man--even one who had robbed him--had not
his very good points. Is a man a ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, an idler?
"Ah," they say, "his father rose he up like a gen'leman, an' that's
what comes o'it." In their dealings, they curiously combine generosity
and close-fistedness--close-fistedness in earning, and generosity in
spending and lending. A beachcomber, for simply laying a hand to a
rope, receives a pint of beer, or the price of it, and next moment the
fisherman who paid the money may be seen getting wet through and
spoiling his clothes in order to drag a farthing's worth of jetsam
from the surf. Tony fails to understand how a gen'leman can possibly
haggle over the hire of a boat. When he goes away himself, he pays
what is asked; regrets it afterwards, if at all; and comes home when
his money is done. "If a gen'leman," he says, "can't afford to pay the
rate, what du 'ee come on the beach to hire a boat for--an' try to
beat a fellow down? I reckon 'tis only a _sort o' gen'leman_ as does
that!"

Like most seafarer