Here Dalmatïa, dimly amethystine,
Flecks with ivory homes her hill-recesses,
Pearls with ivory towns the hazy, curving
Rims of Hadria, where to land he presses
Sapphire-panoplied, unrebuked, a pristine
Urgent lover of Earth the unreserving.
There aloft in a milky opalescent
Scene of sky—is he cloud?—or undetermined;
Sketched in heaven, a drift of alabaster,
Apennine in an icy wrapper ermined,
Keeps the moon o' to-night, the puny crescent
Waiting there for the sea to drown her master?
Candid-blue as an early periwinkle,
League-long Hadria, mapped for admiration,
Floats now lank as a sheet o' silky tissue,
Now ballooned with a fickle suspiration—
Look, a dolphin! He rends the oily wrinkle,
Snubnosed, finned to a knife, he cuts an issue!
Southwind! Demagogue! How the many-headed
Mobs of Hadria, desperately justling,
Hear thee clamour of Atlas and Sahara,
Densely shouldering, each on other hustling!
Wisps of spray spun agog! A field o' tedded
Sea-swathes, left as he drives away to Zara!
Dusky isle upon isle below th' horizon
(Where the furrowy flood towards a bound'ry
Reels out after us alway undiminished)
Pales like masses of iron in the foundry.
Sinks Messenia: hardly light the eyes on
Snows of Candia: all the flaws be finished—
Pure the Mediterranean, the jewel
Fused to facility, radiantly plastic,
Swings enormous, a king's domain of ocean;
While the ship with a hearty pulse elastic
Runs the gauntlet again, again the duel
Faces, nerved to a rhythm o' tense emotion.
Night unrolls as a mist along the water;
Small stars gather aloft with each a candle;
Low suspended upon the hems of heaven
Yon moon-sickle o' brass without a handle
Waits a reaper to thrust her in, to slaughter
Undreamed acres of ears. A busy leaven
Brews the mother-o'-pearly flower enamelled
Momentarily on the murky liquor;
Dots of fire i' the mazy ripple shiver:
Deep below thro' the glassy antre flicker,
Feebly pushed, in steely seas betrammelled,
Vanguard streams o' the great, the holy River.
So to sleep. With to-morrow morn a trenchant
Fringe of white to the azure and the azure:
Alexandria, hospitable portal,
(Bright seed carried upon the windy pleasure
Of victorious Hellas) opes the ancient
Eastern mother of all the West, immortal.
Flecks with ivory homes her hill-recesses,
Pearls with ivory towns the hazy, curving
Rims of Hadria, where to land he presses
Sapphire-panoplied, unrebuked, a pristine
Urgent lover of Earth the unreserving.
There aloft in a milky opalescent
Scene of sky—is he cloud?—or undetermined;
Sketched in heaven, a drift of alabaster,
Apennine in an icy wrapper ermined,
Keeps the moon o' to-night, the puny crescent
Waiting there for the sea to drown her master?
Candid-blue as an early periwinkle,
League-long Hadria, mapped for admiration,
Floats now lank as a sheet o' silky tissue,
Now ballooned with a fickle suspiration—
Look, a dolphin! He rends the oily wrinkle,
Snubnosed, finned to a knife, he cuts an issue!
Southwind! Demagogue! How the many-headed
Mobs of Hadria, desperately justling,
Hear thee clamour of Atlas and Sahara,
Densely shouldering, each on other hustling!
Wisps of spray spun agog! A field o' tedded
Sea-swathes, left as he drives away to Zara!
Dusky isle upon isle below th' horizon
(Where the furrowy flood towards a bound'ry
Reels out after us alway undiminished)
Pales like masses of iron in the foundry.
Sinks Messenia: hardly light the eyes on
Snows of Candia: all the flaws be finished—
Pure the Mediterranean, the jewel
Fused to facility, radiantly plastic,
Swings enormous, a king's domain of ocean;
While the ship with a hearty pulse elastic
Runs the gauntlet again, again the duel
Faces, nerved to a rhythm o' tense emotion.
Night unrolls as a mist along the water;
Small stars gather aloft with each a candle;
Low suspended upon the hems of heaven
Yon moon-sickle o' brass without a handle
Waits a reaper to thrust her in, to slaughter
Undreamed acres of ears. A busy leaven
Brews the mother-o'-pearly flower enamelled
Momentarily on the murky liquor;
Dots of fire i' the mazy ripple shiver:
Deep below thro' the glassy antre flicker,
Feebly pushed, in steely seas betrammelled,
Vanguard streams o' the great, the holy River.
So to sleep. With to-morrow morn a trenchant
Fringe of white to the azure and the azure:
Alexandria, hospitable portal,
(Bright seed carried upon the windy pleasure
Of victorious Hellas) opes the ancient
Eastern mother of all the West, immortal.