In the long current of that blowing gale

That drives the moon and stars, the sun, the earth,

Suddenly dies the storm; the torrent lulls;

The skimming fleet of stars reels back, and drifts,

While an enormous quiet waits in heaven.

Here in a room, with lamplight on the walls,

I feel the living world beneath my house

Dip in the gale, and worlds below my world.

Over my head the constellations halt,

And sailing planets hang between the waves. . . .

Then forward foams the night. The pouring stars

Follow the earth forever in the air,

Go streaming past, go flying on before;

Now backward runs the wake, the dark goes under,

And the broad current of the blowing gale

Carries the earth along among the stars

And outer silence of the roaring wind.

But here with flat book open on my knees,

The well-known window, and the steady clock,

Curtains that shut the muffled city out,

And love that shines upon the evening air,

My blood remembers how the ship, this world,

Is beating on and up through infinite space.

The wind-borne earth bears up my level floor,

And resting in this chair I ride the gale.