Classic Poem

The cliffs resemble a roll of long reverberate thunder,
Dark solid-bodied form of some rock-crashing peal,
Long reverberate roll of a loud tumultuous peal;
They are a rampart round the pylon rent asunder
From the mainland by the might of yonder waves that steal
Slowly and surely in from where they roar in the distance;
I hasten over the sand that paves the lonely court,
Pass through the giant pylon, and with a swift insistence
Climb rocks in front of the cave that is the Sea's resort.
Only He for awhile hath left His grand Sea-palace,
And I may enter, daring for a moment to explore,
Until anon beneath the Titan arch He dallies,
Ere He arrive to play with the boulders on the floor;
Arch He hath hewn for Himself in scorn of our rondure of arches,
Tall, irregular, huge, in outline lightning forked,
While day and night He moved in four great moon-led marches,
And mouths of the foaming surge with the hollow mountain talked.
Was not the Architect Chaos? the storm's abraded edges,
Gloom-model after which He set Himself to mould,
Or the journeying billows' beetling, mountain-rupturing ridges?
Old Chaos hath a genius primeval, vast and bold,
Who tints the windy walls with dim red rust and gold!
When the Main is here at home his lucid halls are paven
With a foamy-veined, and shifting shadowed emerald;
When he leaves, the ponderous purple boulders are engraven
With fairy tales of the water by the mighty scald.
I bathe and wade in the pools, rich-wrought with flowers of the ocean,
Or over the yellow sand run swift to meet the sea,
Dive under the falls of foam, or float on a weariless motion
Of the alive, clear wave, heaving undulant under me!
The grey gull wails aloft; he floats on the breast of the billow,
And a wet seal flounders flippered on a shelf of the cave;
He knows well I'll not hurt him, brother of mine, dear fellow;
His mild brown eye beholds confidingly and suave.
Yonder the mouth of the dark long subterranean hollow,
Where with a light in my hat I drove the birds one day,
Who seeing the narrowing end, and a swimmer persistently follow,
Dived unexpectedly under, and rose up far away!
But the cavern hath awful tones, dull crimson hues of the henbane,
Blood-red, as ancient Murder had been hiding here,
So old and unremembered, gory tints of the den wane;
Nay, for a smell of slaughter haunts the antres drear!
I will not remember, I thought! forget by the brine that I love so
All the terror of human sin that made me grieve!
Ah! refreshed for a moment, how may I hope to remove so
From the wrongs of those, my brethren? 'tis but a brief reprieve!
I deem some Horror hides in yonder gloom of the hollows,
The surge returns to glut them somewhere near my lair;
And while the sullen sound my lone ear gloomily follows,
With some foreboding cold to gaze around I dare.
Oh! what are these at my feet? Ship-timbers, masts that are shattered,
In the howl of the hurricane, crunched on the iron of rocks—
And lo! 'tis a corpse in the corner, swollen, sodden, and battered,
Nodding, and tossing its arms with the swirl against the blocks!
For the Sea hath returned already, He enters the outermost portal;
Let a man begone, or drown, by the crag-walled vestibule;
Let him begone, or drown, by the echoing vestibule!
Ah! 'tis the corpse of a boy there—hear the wail of a mortal
Who weeps by a fire in a far land, and waits for her beautiful!
The sea hath returned already; He laughs in the outermost portal;
He washeth over the boulders, thundering to and fro!
Who are they that inhabit here aloof from the mortal?
What awful Powers, indifferent to human joy or woe?
Of Demiurgic Powers, afar from the man and the woman,
Are these dim echoing chambers the mystical veiled thought,
Indifferent, aloof, or enemy to the human? …
How, then, are they a haven for minds and hearts o'er wrought?
Ah! many and many an hour in your sublime communion
I pass, O gods unknown, of ocean, wind, and cloud;
I find profound repose, refreshment flow from the union.
Yet, O my soul, divorce no sufferers in the crowd!
Nay, for I hear in the air that pestilence of the voices—
And it is not all the gale, nor cry of the wild sea-mew!
“Say what sinister joy, not man's this time, rejoices,
The loud, shipwrecking, murderous tempest-whirl to brew?”