I walked looking at it, but I was thinking of the sea I wanted
to see. At last I wondered what that curious blue thing might be; then it
struck me it was the sea! I would have turned back again, only I was too
tired. I wonder if all the things we long to see--the churches, the
pictures, the men in Europe--will disappoint us so! You see I had dreamed
of it so long. When I was a little boy, minding sheep behind the kopje, I
used to see the waves stretching out as far as the eye could reach in the
sunlight. My sea! Is the idea always more beautiful than the real?
"I got to the beach that afternoon, and I saw the water run up and down on
the sand, and I saw the white foam breakers; they were pretty, but I
thought I would go back the next day. It was not my sea.
"But I began to like it when I sat by it that night in the moonlight; and
the next day I liked it better; and before I left I loved it. It was not
like the sky and stars, that talk of what has no beginning and no end; but
it is so human. Of all the things I have ever seen, only the sea is like a
human being; the sky is not, nor the earth. But the sea is always moving,
always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never rests. It is
always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then it creeps back
slowly without having reached, moaning.
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