Crashing into knowledge

From The Atlantic Monthly, Vol 2., No.1

Shipwreck
by James Russell Lowell

We who by shipwreck only find the shores
Of divine wisdom can but kneel at first,
Can but exult to feel beneath our feet,
That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,
The shock and sustenance of solid earth:
Inland afar we see what temples gleam
Through immemorial stems of sacred groves,
And we conjecture shining shapes therein;
Yet for a space 'tis good to wonder here
Among the shells and seaweed of the beach.