Classic Poem

This watery vague how vast! This misty globe,
Seen from this center where the ferry plies, —
It plies, but seems to poise in middle air, —
Soft gray below gray heavens, and in the west
A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun;
And, where gray water touches grayer sky,
A band of darker gray pricked out with lights, —
A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all;
And where the statue looms, a quenchless star;
And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame;
While the great bridge its starry diadem
Shows through the gray, itself in grayness lost!