Copyright 1952 by Robert Frost

Ocean sea for all your being vast
Your separation of us from the Old
That should have made the New World newly great
Would only disappoint us at the last
If it should not do anything foretold
To make us different in a single trait.

This though we took the Indian name for maize
And changed it to the English name for wheat.
It seemed to comfort us to call it corn.
And so with homesickness in many ways
We sought however crudely to defeat
Our chance of being people newly born.

And now, o sea, you're lost by aeroplane.
Our sailors ride a bullet for a boat.
Our coverage of distance is so facile
It makes us to have had a sea in vain.
Our moat around us is no more a moat,
Our continent no more a moated castle.

Grind shells, o futile sea, grind empty shells
For all the use you are along the strand.
I cannot hold you innocent of fault.
Spring water in our mountain bosom swells
To pour fresh rivers on you from the land
Till you have lost the savor of your salt.*

*At this writing it seems pretty well accepted that any rivers added can only make the sea saltier.

I pick a dead shell up from where the kelp
Lies in a windrow brittle dry and black,
And holding it far forward for a symbol
I cry “Do work for women—all the help
I ask of you. Grind this I throw you back
Into a lady’s finger ring or thimble.”

The ocean had been spoken to before.*
But if it had no thought of paying heed
To taunt of mine I knew a place to go
Where I need listen to its rote no more
Nor taste its salt, nor smell its fish and weed,
Nor be reminded of them in a blow—

So far inland the very name of ocean
Goes mentionless except in baby-school
When teacher's own experiences fail her
And she can only give the class a notion
Of what it is by calling it a pool
And telling them how Sinbad was a sailor.

*By King Canute and Lord Byron among others.

DRAWINGS
BY HOWARD COOK

Printed at The Spiral Press · New York

December 31, 1949

Dear Mr. Frost:

The exquisite reprint of your poem reached
me this morning and moved me very much, not only for
itself but for a special reason.

Whenever I am depressed by such ghastly
spectacles as our present literary scene displays,
I remember that there is real poetry unconnected
with cliques and literary cafe society. I am grateful
to my maker that you exist.

With warmest and best wishes for the New Year,
I am,

Cordially yours,

June 24, 1950

Dear Mr. Frost:

I meant to tell you after the meeting of the
Academy that your poem impressed me very much indeed.
When does it come out? I am looking forward to it. I
found it moving at all points and felt that there was
something particular in it that these times had better
meditate. I meant to write this letter a month ago, but
as Ruskin once said when excusing a delinquency, "Satan
prevented me."

In a week or two I hope to be able to send you
an enormous work on which I have spent in the neighbor-
hood of six years. It is a translation of The Lusiads of
Camões and has been brought out with more than oriental
splendor by the Hispanic Society of America. I have added
notes and a translation of what seems to me the most superb
of all Camoes lyrical poems as well. It is a religious
poem and makes me think of a conflation of the ode on the
morning of Christ's Nativity. Lopes de Vega called it,
"The pearl of all poetry," and I almost believe him.

With warmest and best wishes and continuing
admiration, I am,