And over its crown you will see arise,
Against a background of slaty skies,
A row of pillars still and white,
That glimmer, and then are out of
sight,

As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night,

The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide ;

There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight,

Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide,

Where the breakers struggle left and right,

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the light-house slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown

Full and fair on White Island head,
A great mist-jotun you will see
Lifting himself up silently

High and huge o'er the light-house top, With hands of wavering spray outspread,

Groping after the little tower,

That seems to shrink and shorten and cower,

Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop,

And silently and fruitlessly
He sinks again into the sea.

They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp,

Beyond all reach of hope or help; And such in a storm is Appledore.

VI.

'Tis the sight of a lifetime to behold The great shorn sun as you see it now, Across eight miles of undulant gold That widens landward, weltered and rolled,

With freaks of shadow and crimson stains;

To see the solid mountain brow

As it notches the disk, and gains and gains

Until there comes, you scarce know when,

A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes, then

From the body of day the sun-soul slips

And the face of earth darkens; but no the strips

Of western vapor, straight and thin, From which the horizon's swervings

win

A grace of contrast, take fire and burn Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould

Of ashes o'erfeathers; northward turn For an instant, and let your eye grow

cold

Of that long cloud-bar in the West,
Whose nether edge, erelong, you see
The silvery chrism in turn anoint,
And then the tiniest rosy point
Touched doubtfully and timidly
Into the dark blue's chilly strip,
As some mute, wondering thing below,
Awakened by the thrilling glow,
Might, looking up, see Dian dip
One lucent foot's delaying tip
In Latmian fountains long ago.

Knew you what silence was before?
Here is no startle of dreaming bird
That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing;
Here is no sough of branches stirred,
Nor noise of any living thing,
Such as one hears by night on shore;
Only, now and then, a sigh,
With fickle intervals between,
Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh,
Such as Andromeda might have heard,
And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen
Turning in sleep; it is the sea
That welters and wavers uneasily
Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.

They sit all day by the greenwood tree, The lover and loved, as it wont to be, When we but grief conquered, and all together They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore

Of some planet dispeopled, -"Never

'T was just a womanly presence,

An influence unexprest,

But a rose she had worn, on my grave

sod

Were more than long life with the

rest!

'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle,

'T was nothing that I can phrase, But the whole dumb dwelling grew

conscious,

And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside

That looks over woodland and corn.

A MOOD.

PINE in the distance,
Patient through sun or rain,
Meeting with graceful persistence,
With yielding but rooted resistance,
The northwind's wrench and strain,
No memory of past existence
Brings thee pain;

Right for the zenith heading,
Friendly with heat or cold,

Thine arms to the influence spreading
Of the heavens, just from of old,
Thou only aspirest the more,
Unregretful the old leaves shedding
That fringed thee with music before,
And deeper thy roots embedding
In the grace and the beauty of yore;
Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older,
The green of last summer is sear!
But loftier, hopefuller, bolder,
Wins broader horizons each year.

Of waves on the shore
A shattered vessel flinging.

As thou musest still of the ocean
On which thou must float at last,
And seem'st to foreknow
The shipwreck's woe

And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,

Do I, in this vague emotion,
This sadness that will not pass,
Though the air throbs with wings,
And the field laughs and sings,
Do I forebode, alas!

The ship-building longer and wearier,
The voyage's struggle and strife,
And then the darker and drearier
Wreck of a broken life?

The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft mist,

Denied all foothold. But the dream remained,

And every night with yellow-bearded kings

His sleep was haunted, mighty men

of old,