| |
| OVERLOOKING the town of Lynn, | |
| So far above that the city’s din | |
| Mingles and blends with the heavy roar | |
| Of the breakers along the curving shore, | |
| Scarred and furrowed and glacier-seamed, | 5 |
| Back in the ages so long ago, | |
| The boldest philosopher never dreamed | |
| To count the centuries’ ebb and flow, | |
| Stands a rock with its gray old face | |
| Eastward, ever turned to the place | 10 |
| Where first the rim of the sun is seen,— | |
| Whenever the morning sky is bright,— | |
| Cleaving the glistening, glancing sheen | |
| Of the sea with disk of insufferable light. | |
| Down in the earth his roots strike deep; | 15 |
| Up to his breast the houses creep, | |
| Climbing e’en to his rugged face, | |
| Or nestling lovingly at his base. | |
| |
| Stand on his forehead, bare and brown, | |
| Send your gaze o’er the roofs of the town, | 20 |
| Away to the line so faint and dim, | |
| Where the sky stoops down to the crystal rim | |
| Of the broad Atlantic whose billows toss, | |
| Wrestling and weltering and hurrying on | |
| With awful fury whenever across | 25 |
| His broad, bright surface with howl and moan, | |
| The Tempest wheels, with black wing bowed | |
| To the yielding waters which fly to the cloud, | |
| Or hurry along with thunderous shocks | |
| To break on the ragged and riven rocks. | 30 |
| |
| When the tide comes in on a sunny day, | |
| You can see the waves beat back in spray | |
| From the splintered spurs of Phillips Head, | |
| Or tripping along with dainty tread, | |
| As of a million glancing feet | 35 |
| Shake out the light in a quick retreat, | |
| Or along the smooth curve of the beach, | |
| Snowy and curling, in long lines reach. | |
| |
| An islet anchored and held to land | |
| By a glistening, foam-fringed ribbon of sand; | 40 |
| That is Nahant, and that hoary ledge | |
| To the left is Egg Rock, like a blunted wedge, | |
| Cleaving the restless ocean’s breast, | |
| And bearing the lighthouse on its crest. | |
| |
| All these things and a hundred more, | 45 |
| Hill and meadow and marsh and shore, | |
| Your eye o’erlooks from the gray bluff’s brow; | |
| And I sometimes wonder what, if now | |
| The old rock had a voice, ’t would say | |
| Of the countless years it has gazed afar | 50 |
| Over the sea as it looks to-day; | |
| Gazed unmoved, though with furrow and scar | |
| The sculptor ages have wrought his face, | |
| While centuries came and went apace, | |
| Just like the ceaseless ebb and flow | 55 |
| Of the restless hurrying tides below. | |
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