Classic Poem

How bold the Imagination and how strong
That makes so rich with carven-work these shores!
More gorgeous they than Oriental throng —
What altar-pomps, and rough with beaten ores!
These great events, once fluid as a song,
Now gates uplift, e'en His authentic doors!
(His stay no tent is for-a-night along
The murmuring floods and boisterous battle-roars.)

The wedge of frost, and beetle wave, sand blast,
With stroke of pencil-sun, and wash of rain,
Outline unsearchable and shadow vast!
And evermore, as moons grow or decline,
The whirl and speed of tidal lathe and plane
Shaping chaotic mass to forms divine!