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I ARE your rocks shelter for ships?— | |
| Have you sent galleys from your beach, | |
| Are you graded—a safe crescent— | |
| Where the tide lifts them back to port? | |
| Are you full and sweet, | 5 |
| Tempting the quiet | |
| To depart in their trading ships? | |
| |
| Nay, you are great, fierce, evil— | |
| You are the land-blight. | |
| You have tempted men | 10 |
| But they perished on your cliffs. | |
| |
| Your lights are but dank shoals, | |
| Slate and pebble and wet shells | |
| And sea-weed fastened to the rocks. | |
| |
| It was evil—evil | 15 |
| When they found you, | |
| When the quiet men looked at you. | |
| They sought a headland | |
| Shaded with ledge of cliff | |
| From the wind-blast. | 20 |
| |
| But you—you are unsheltered, | |
| Cut with the weight of wind. | |
| You shudder when it strikes, | |
| Then lift, swelled with the blast. | |
| You sink as the tide sinks, | 25 |
| You shrill under hail and sound, | |
| Thunder when thunder sounds. | |
| |
| You are useless: | |
| When the tides swirl | |
| Your boulders cut and wreck | 30 |
| The staggering ships. | |
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II You are useless, | |
| O grave, O beautiful. | |
| The landsmen tell it—I have heard— | |
| You are useless. | 35 |
| |
| And the wind sounds with this | |
| And the sea | |
| Where rollers shot with blue | |
| Cut under deeper blue. | |
| |
| Oh, but stay tender, enchanted | 40 |
| Where wave-lengths cut you | |
| Apart from all the rest— | |
| For we have found you, | |
| We watch the splendor of you, | |
| We thread throat on throat of freesia | 45 |
| For your shelf. | |
| |
| You are not forgot, | |
| O plunder of lilies, | |
| Honey is not more sweet | |
| Than the salt stretch of your beach. | 50 |
| |
III Stay—stay— | |
| But terror has caught us now. | |
| We passed the men in ships, | |
| We dared deeper than the fisher-folk; | |
| And you strike us with terror, | 55 |
| O bright shaft. | |
| |
| Flame passes under us | |
| And sparks that unknot the flesh— | |
| Sorrow, splitting bone from bone, | |
| Splendors thwart our eyes | 60 |
| And rifts in the splendor, | |
| Sparks and scattered light. | |
| |
| Many warned of this, | |
| Men said: | |
| “There are wrecks on the fore-beach, | 65 |
| Wind will beat your ship, | |
| There is no shelter in that headland; | |
| It is useless waste, that edge, | |
| That front of rock— | |
| Sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers, | 70 |
| None venture to that spot.” | |
| |
IV But hail— | |
| As the tide slackens, | |
| As the wind beats out, | |
| We hail this shore— | 75 |
| We sing to you, | |
| Spirit between the headlands | |
| And the further rocks. | |
| |
| Though oak-beams split, | |
| Though boats and sea-men flounder, | 80 |
| And the strait grind sand with sand | |
| And cut boulders to sand and drift— | |
| |
| Your eyes have pardoned our faults, | |
| Your hands have touched us; | |
| You have leaned forward a little | 85 |
| And the waves can never thrust us back | |
| From the splendor of your ragged coast. | |
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