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(Excerpt)
JUST back from a beach of sand and shells, | |
| And shingle the tides leave oozy and dank, | |
| Summer and winter the old man dwells | |
| In his low brown house on the river bank. | |
| Tempest and sea-fog sweep the hoar | 5 |
| And wrinkled sand-drifts round his door, | |
| Where often I see him sit, as gray | |
| And weather-beaten and lonely as they. | |
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| Coarse grasses wave on the arid swells | |
| In the wind; and two dwarf poplar-trees | 10 |
| Seem hung all over with silver bells | |
| That tinkle and twinkle in sun and breeze. | |
| All else is desolate sand and stone: | |
| And here the old lobsterman lives alone: | |
| Nor other companionship has he | 15 |
| But to sit in his house and gaze at the sea. | |
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| A furlong or more away to the south, | |
| On the bar beyond the huge sea-walls | |
| That keep the channel and guard its mouth, | |
| The high, curved billow whitens and falls; | 20 |
| And the racing tides through the granite gate, | |
| On their wild errands that will not wait, | |
| Forever, unresting, to and fro, | |
| Course with impetuous ebb and flow. | |
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| They bury the barnacled ledge, and make | 25 |
| Into every inlet and crooked creek, | |
| And flood the flats with a shining lake, | |
| Which the proud ship ploughs with foam at her beak; | |
| The ships go up to yonder town, | |
| Or over the sea their hulls sink down, | 30 |
| And many a pleasure pinnace rides | |
| On the restless backs of the rushing tides. | |
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| I try to fathom the gazer’s dreams, | |
| But little I gain from his gruff replies; | |
| Far off, far off the spirit seems, | 35 |
| As he looks at me with those strange, gray eyes; | |
| Never a hail from the shipwrecked heart! | |
| Mysterious oceans seem to part | |
| The desolate man from all his kind— | |
| The Selkirk of his lonely mind. * * * * * | 40 |
| Solace he finds in the sea, no doubt: | |
| To catch the ebb he is up and away: | |
| I see him silently pushing out | |
| On the broad, bright gleam, at break of day; | |
| And watch his lessening dory toss | 45 |
| On the purple crests as he pulls across, | |
| Round reefs where silvery surges leap, | |
| And meets the dawn on the rosy deep. | |
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| His soul, is it open to sea and sky? | |
| His spirit, alive to sound and sight? | 50 |
| What wondrous tints on the water lie,— | |
| Wild, wavering, liquid realm of light! | |
| Between two glories looms the shape | |
| Of yon wood-crested, cool green cape, | |
| Sloping all round to foam-laced ledge, | 55 |
| And cavern and cove, at the bright sea’s edge. | |
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| He makes for the floats that mark the spots, | |
| And rises and falls on the sweeping swells, | |
| Ships oars, and pulls his lobster-pots, | |
| And tumbles the tangled claws and shells | 60 |
| In the leaky bottom; and bails his skiff; | |
| While the slow waves thunder along the cliff, | |
| And foam far away where sun and mist | |
| Edge all the region with amethyst; | |
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| I watch him, and fancy how, a boy, | 65 |
| Round these same reefs, in the rising sun, | |
| He rowed and rocked, and shouted for joy, | |
| As over the boat-side, one by one, | |
| He lifted and launched his lobster-traps, | |
| And reckoned his gains, and dreamed, perhaps, | 70 |
| Of a future as glorious, vast, and bright | |
| As the ocean, unrolled in the morning light. * * * * * | |
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