Behold, the sea...

This is the loch opposite my house this afternoon with the wind pushing the waves and sparkling in the intermittent sun. But this seems also a time for poetry, perhaps almost subliminally, for I thought of Whitman when I saw the image and the opening line of "A song for all seas, all ships" which was the text for Vaughan Williams "Sea Symphony". Whitman is an acquired taste, and I am not sure I have ever fully acquired it, but there are great thoughts in it, including what this picture suggests :

"myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow"

And perhaps the final lines of the poem in the sequence gives me the strongest message today :

Sail forth -- steer for the deep waters only,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!