Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,

Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide;

Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,

Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses,

These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island,

As I wended the shores I know,

As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.

4. As I wend the shores I know not,

As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked,

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,

At once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or that I see or touch, I know not;

I, too, but signify, at the utmost, a little washed-up drift,

A few sands and dead leaves to gather,

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.

5. O baffled, balked,

Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows,

Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,