| |
I.
THE CLIFFS
THESE iron-rifted cliffs, that o’er the deep, | |
| Wave-worn and thunder-scarred, enormous lower, | |
| Stand like the work of some primeval Power, | |
| Titan or Demiurgos, that would keep | |
| Firm ward forever o’er the bastioned steep | 5 |
| Of turret-crowned Beltard, or mightiest Moher: | |
| Vainly beneath, as though they would devour | |
| The rooted rocks before them, reel and leap | |
| The headlong waves; and as a plumed phalanx, | |
| Crushed in the assault of some strong citadel, | 10 |
| Indomitable still, its shattered ranks | |
| Cheers to the breach again, and yet again, | |
| So from the battling billows bursts the swell | |
| Of a more awful combat than of men! | |
| |
II.
THE CLIFFS
THOUGH all is grand, nay, somewhat stern, around, | 15 |
| Yet softer beauties decorate the scene: | |
| No floral garniture of meadow ground, | |
| No perspective of pastures ever green, | |
| No shadowy pomp of woods, no silver sheen | |
| Of waterfalls, with music in their sound, | 20 |
| Nor mountains, fading in the blue serene, | |
| Nor perfume of the gardens, here are found. | |
| Yet here hath Nature lavished hues, and scent, | |
| And melody, born handmaids of the ocean: | |
| Metallic veins, with moss and rock-flowers blent, | 25 |
| Brighten the laminated crag; the motion | |
| Of waves, the breezes fragrant from the sea, | |
| And cry of birds, combine one glorious symphony! | |
| |
III.
THE HAG’S-HEAD CAPE
THAT last and loftiest cape, whose wasted front | |
| Looks down the Atlantic waters evermore, | 30 |
| Far out above the main sustains a gaunt | |
| Colossal head (so seems it) bending o’er, | |
| With stony gaze perpetual, the wild shore: | |
| There fixed for ages, where her wiles were wont | |
| To lure and to betray, a mightier Power | 35 |
| Charmed into stone the Siren at her haunt, | |
| A monumental beacon. Such the tale | |
| Our simple hinds rely on, to its place | |
| Accordant. In that hoary mass we trace | |
| Features, like death in frost compressed and pale, | 40 |
| And awful as the sculptures in the vale | |
| Of Nile,—the Memphian Sphinx, and Osymandias. | |
| |
IV.
SPANISH POINT
THE WATERS—O the waters!—wild and glooming, | |
| Beneath the stormy pall that shrouds the sky, | |
| On, through the deepening mist more darkly looming, | 45 |
| Plumed with the pallid foam funereally, | |
| Onward, like death, they come, the rocks entombing! | |
| Nor thunder knell is needful from on high; | |
| Nor sound of signal gun, momently booming | |
| O’er the disastrous deep; nor seaman’s cry! | 50 |
| And yet,—if aught were wanting,—manifold | |
| Mementos haunt those reefs: how that proud host | |
| Of Spain and Rome so smitten were of old, | |
| By God’s decree, along this fatal coast, | |
| And over all their purple and their gold, | 55 |
| Mitre, and helm, and harp, the avenging waters rolled! | |
| |
V.
MALBAY SANDS
IT may not be, because this tranquil hour, | |
| Brightening elsewhere to beauty scenes more grand, | |
| Here lights with milder beam a lowlier strand, | |
| And that yon sea, like a tired warrior, | 60 |
| For quiet joy hath laid aside his power, | |
| That unattractive, therefore, must expand | |
| This graceful curvature of golden sand | |
| By the ebbing tide left shining. Vernal bower | |
| Is scarce more fragrant than those weeds marine | 65 |
| Fringing the chrysolite, pellucid wells, | |
| Wave-worn in the rock, where children stoop for shells, | |
| And braiding yon gray reef with tresses green, | |
| Where sunset loiterers love at eve to stand,— | |
| Dark groups, with shadows lengthening to the land. | 70 |
| |
VI.
THE SOLITUDES OF MALBAY
AND O ye solitudes of rocks and waters, | |
| And medicinable gales and sounds Lethean, | |
| Remote from strife and fratricidal slaughters, | |
| Have I not sighed to hear your mighty pæan, | |
| Reverberating through the empyrean, | 75 |
| And yearned to gaze while your white-throated surges | |
| Leap, and dissolve in air, like shapes Protean, | |
| That sport in the sunset, as the moon emerges | |
| Over the sea-cliff? Have I not felt the longing | |
| Then most intensely, when the storm-steed rushes | 80 |
| O’er the wild waves tumultuously thronging, | |
| Smiting their wan crests,—scattering as he crushes;— | |
| To stand on some lone peak, and hear, from under | |
| Its caverned base, the ocean’s melancholy thunder? | |
| |
