THE SHORE.

149

All the place, in a lurid glimmering emerald glory, Glares like a Titan world come back under heaven

again ; Yonder, up there, are the steeps of the sea-kings

famous in story, But who are they on the beach ? They are neither

women normen.

Who knows. Are they the land's or the water's

living creatures ? Born of the boiling sea ? nursed in the seething

storms ? With their woman's hair dishevelled over their stern

male features, Striding bare to the knee, magnified maritime forms !

They may be the mothers and wives, they may be the

sisters and daughters, Of men in the dark mid-seas, alone in those black

coil'd hulls, That toil ’neath yon white cloud, whence the moon will

rise o'er the waters To-night with her face on fire, if the wind in the even

ing lulls.

But they may be merely visions, such as only sick men

witness (Sitting, as I sit here, filled with a wild regret), Framed from the sea's misshapen spume with a horri

ble fitness To the winds in which they walk, and the surges by

which they are wet.

Salamanders, sea-wolves, witches, warlocks, marine

monsters, Which the dying seaman beholds when the rats are

swimming away, And an Indian wind 'gins hiss from an unknown isle,

and alone stirs The broken cloud which burns on the verge of the dead

red day.

I know not. All my mind is confused, nor can I dis

sever

The mould of the visible world from the shape of my

thoughts in me. The Inward and Outward are fused, and through them

murmur for ever The sorrow whose sound is the wind, and the roar of the limitless sea.

OWEN MEREDITH.

ON THE CLIFF.

1.

LEANED on the turf,

I looked at a rock
Left dry by the surf;
For the turf, to call it grass were to mock:
Dead to the roots, so deep was done
The work of the summer sun.

ON THE CLIFF.

151

II.

And the rock lay flat
As an anvil's face:
No iron like that!
Baked dry: of a weed, of a shell, no trace ;
Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,
Death's altar by the lone shore.

III.

On the turf, sprang gay
With his films of blue,
No cricket, I'll say,
But a war-horse, barded and chanfroned too,
The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight,
Real fairy, with wings all right.

IV.

On the rock, they scorch
Like a drop of fire
From a brandished torch,
Fell two red fans of a butterfly:
No turf, no rock, in their ugly stead,
See, wonderful blue and red !

V.

Is it not so
With the minds of men ?
The level and low,
The burnt and bare, in themselves ; but then
With such a blue and red grace, not theirs,
Love settling unawares !

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE SEA-LIMITS.

CONSIDER the sea’s listless chime:

Time's self it is made audible, The murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end. Our sight may pass

No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet which is death's, – it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life,

Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,

Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Lost utterly, the whole sky stands Gray and not known along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods ;

Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee.

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again, – Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strewn beach,

And listen at its lips : they sigh
The same desire and mystery,

CHILD'S SONG IN WINTER.

153

The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not any thing but what thou art;
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

Dante GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

CHILD'S SONG IN WINTER.

OUTSIDE the garden

The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on

The summer side;
Shut out the flower time,
Sunbeam and shower time;
Make
way

for our time,
The winter tide.
Green once and cheery,
The woods worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary,

Weak sun goes home ;
A great wind grapples

The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt sea foreland,
Our noisy norland

Resounds and rings;