Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are <br />drawn <br />Like smoking mountains bright from the west <br />And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then <br />suddenly <br />The old granite forgets half a year's filth: <br />The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots <br />Of dung in corners of the rock, and used <br />Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings <br />of the summer <br />Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy: <br />I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all <br />seasons <br />The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep, <br />Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long <br />coast <br />Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines: <br />The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more <br />numerous, <br />The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed <br />Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains <br />The dignity of room, the value of rareness.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/november-surf/
