Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How Like the Sea

How like the sea, the myriad-minded sea,
Is this large love of ours: so vast, so deep,
So full of mysteries! it, too, can keep
Its secrets, like the ocean; and is free,
Free, as the boundless main. Now it may be
Calm like the brow of some sweet child asleep;
Again its seething billows surge and leap
And break in fulness of their ecstasy.

Each wave so like the wave which came before,
Yet never two the same! Imperative
And then persuasive as the cooing dove,
Encroaching ever on the yielding shore--
Ready to take; yet readier still to give--
How like the myriad-minded sea, is love.