From out the dragging vastness of the sea, <br />Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands, <br />He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands <br />One moment, white and dripping, silently, <br />Cut like a cameo in lazuli, <br />Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands <br />Prone in the jeering water, and his hands <br />Clutch for support where no support can be. <br />So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch, <br />He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow <br />And sandflies dance their little lives away. <br />The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch <br />The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow, <br />And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.<br /><br />Amy Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/convalescence-2/
