Thalatta

When Love is fading from thy path, a faint remembered gleam.
Whose wondrous glory crowned thy crest in youth's triumphal morn ;
When Friendship yields a willow - wand —
once, in Love's generous dream.
Leaned on with all thy weight of soul, defying doubt and scorn.
Once deemed inviolable, divine, an oaken staff, a slay.
Never to fail thee at thy need in all the perilous way ;
When thou art tossed from surge to surge, a helpless waif of ocean,
While hell-born lusts and base-born gusts befool thee with vain motion ;
When foolish wants and angers in ignoble eddies whirl
A human spirit, formed to front God's glory unashamed :
Nor any Cause colossal, like a catapult, may hurl
To splendid goals all powerful souls, chafing, unloved, unnamed :
Then, poet, seek alone resounding hollows of the sea,
And plunge thy sullen soul in ocean's grand immensity !

Dare to scale the water-mountains ! let them topple in loud ruin
O'er thee, lusty swimming from cliff-harboured sandy coves ;
Though stress of tides impetuous threaten thine undoing,
Or violent swirl of undertow, where seething emerald moves
Around rude reefs and promontories, menace with swift death,
Confront the glorious wild Power, who plays with human breath !
Yea, let thy reckless shallop dare seas rushing round the caves.
Smite with straining oar the kindling heavy night of waves I
Climb the sea-crag, hand and foot, little careful of a fall !
Storm shall be thy requiem, fairy foam thy pall.
Ah ! mighty boisterous blown breath, your siren song for me !
I quaff exhilarating draughts of wine from forth the sea,
Soft seething masses of fair froth luring deliciously !
Vaporous blast ! voice of vast long sibilant sea-thunder !
Bellowing explosions in abysmal cavern-halls !
Storm my sense with sound imperial, with a joy sublime and wonder !
Throned aloft in perilous places unto me the
Mother calls.
Hear Her ! tremble not ! but echo to the glowing spirit's core ;
It is Her voice ; Her sons rejoice ; they shout to Her again :
By sacred river-fountains, in the desert blast, and roar
Of bounding cataracts, in forest, by foammountains of the main,
In the grand Atlantic chaos, in his elemental war,
She converses ; I have heard Her ; I would hearken evermore !
Ye, my brothers, loved and worshipped ; all your music rolls with Hers I
Human sounds inform the wind that like a trumpet stirs !
. . . Verily I deem I hear above the tumult of the blast.
That takes my breath, and dashes all the salt spray over me.
Not the sea-mew's cry, nor wind's wail,
. . . eerie tones of some
who passed.
Wailing in the wind's wail, shadows drifting desolately !
For they say the drowned must wander on the cliffs or on the wave.
Where the fatal moment plunged them in their "wandering grave."

Travelling mountain range, following mountain range !
Now the foremost wavering green crest begins to smoke ;
Breaks at one place, and suffers dark precipitous change,
Arching slowly, solemnly ; under where it broke
A heavy shadow haunteth the grim wall ; till emerald.
All the cliff falls over, tumbles a dead weight
Of crushed and crashing water
. . . yonder unenthralled,
A monstrous buffalo in headlong strong tumultuous hate.
Plunging wild hatred upon the rock ! immense white tongues of fire
Are hurled around, enshroud, envelop with a cloud ;
Lo ! where springs to Heaven a fairy fretted spire !
Or is it a wan warrior's arms thrown up in death's despair?
Death-white, baffled in grey air! . . .
Shattered upon his iron Doom in armoured onset there !
Niagaras upthundering, foamy avalanches,
Beetling, flickering huge crags of seething snowy spume,
Wherein are caverns of green tint among pale coral branches,
And white comets 'thwart more shadowy froth-precipice's gloom !
Dark founded isles evanish in the flying mountain tomb ;
Albeit their wave-sculptured forms defiantly abide
Under grey vapours hurrying o'er the sombre tide :
Torn from parent shores, around their pillowed isolation
Ocean revelling roars with terrible elation !

Afar, in the dull offing of a furrowed sullen sea,
O'er yon rock-rooted Pharos rises awfully,
Like a Phantom, rises slowly a white cloud.
Scales the lofty lanthorn where three human hearts are bowed.
Bowed awhile, involved within the Sea- Plume that ascends,
Swallowing a hundred feet of granite ere it bends.

Behold ! the sweep of mighty crags, whose league-long fortress front,
Whose frowning granite arc defies with stature tall and steep
Ocean's embattled billows : these have borne the brunt
Of terrible assaults ! the cannon thunders, and a leap
Of smoke ascends the ramparts of a breached and broken keep.
At each discharge :
The Titan targe hath
pinnacle and tower :
Or is the whole an organ for the surge to smite with power,
That hath the turbulent storm -music for everlasting dower ?

Cathedral Heights of Titans, hewn by colossal Hands,
Millennial ministers of flood and frost, wild earthquake and fierce fire !
Lo ! where a porphyry portal of the mountain heart expands.
Portentous shadowy buttress, weather-goldened spire ;
There multitudinous waters wander greyly in the gloom ;
Within the high sea-sanctuary a god dispenses doom ;
In and out they wander, sombre courtiers by the gate,
Where a dim Sea - Presence broodeth in solemn sullen state —
Where no mortal breath dare whisper, only hollow sounding surges,
A welter of wild waters with their melancholy dirges.

Behold they rave in echoing cave their wrath rent long ago,
Rent for a lair, where grim Despair rolls shouldering to and fro ;
To and fro they furious roll prodigious boulders,
Rounding them like pebbles with huge
Atlantean shoulders.

Beyond one vast rock-sentinel guarding the awful court,
Surrounded and o'ershadowed by walls perpendicular,
Before those palace-portals foamy serpents huge resort,
Wallowing upon the wilderness, grey and cold afar ;
While among the tumbled boulders, before the giant cave.
Robed in royal purple, royal raiment of the wave,
Lie crunched and shattered timbers, ribs of mighty ships ;
Yea, and limbs of some who, craving one more kiss of loving lips.
Were stifled in the violent froth, jammed beneath black stones,
Whose glossy weed may dally with their coral-crusted bones.
Tall, [gaunt Phantom yonder, warding portals of the night,
With silent, sweeping stature growing from the eastern wall,
Lank long arms upraised, and curving with the vasty cavern's height,
A beaked monster face between them, looking downward to appal !
Art thou stone, or art thou spirit, fearful
Shadow weird and grey.
Daring mortals to advance beyond their precincts of the day?

All the cliffs are shrouded to the waist, or only loom
Head and shoulders through a death-mist, but where the rollers boom
Their feet are bare and stern : pale sand I discern
Near their ruined grandeur ; a chrysoprase pale green
Narrow water isles it, with a restless flow ;
The tidal heave advances ; cormorants of swarthy mien
Squat on rocks about the cave, or dive in deeps below.

While sweet samphire, with tufted thrift, glows in clefts above.
Ever and anon a sound, with ominous power to move.
Wanders from the wilderness, a very mournful spell :
Through the wind and wave embroilment ever tolls a passing bell.
Whence the warning ? what imports it ?
When I clamber, when I rest,
It seems to breathe foreboding in a fading air.
Is it from the sombre church in lonely glen deprest ?
There, by old cross and coffin-stone, on immemorial chair
Of rude grey granite, hoary ghosts in dark conclave may brood :
Nay ! but the tolling tolleth from the turbulent flood,
Not from where the giants hewed them vasty seats of solid rock.
Or Druid with poured human blood adored the Logan block :
Not from where the Cromlech ponderous, and hoary cirque remain,
Though we know no more who reared them,
Celt or Dane, or Athelstane ;
Nor whose the mouldered dust in yonder urns of perished prime.
Bard's, or warrior's, who flared a moment in the hollow Night of Time !
— There on dreary moorland haunteth owl and raven ;
There at moonrise hoots the rocky earn, to confound the craven.
While fiends are hunting dark lost souls who are shut out from Heaven —
The knell is knolled by wild white arms ot surges ramping round
The fatal reef, where mariners are drifted to be drowned !
It is the Rundlestone ! He knolls for passing human souls :
It is the voice of Doom from forth profound
Eternity !

Weird dragon forms, roughened in storms, a foamy beryl rolls
Ever around you, dumb and blind stones, who confront the sky !
I feel that in your soul there slumbers a dim
Deity.
. . . Were it not better to dissolve this chaos of the mind.
And in the twilight of your world long consolation find.
Restoring the proud Spirit to your elemental
Powers,
Dying into clifl", and cloud, and snowdrift of sea flowers ?
. . . Vanishes the storm-rack in the gleaming West :
A long wide chasm, glowing like a World of
Rest,
O'er the dusk horizon opens, whereinto
Visionary domes arise, and towers of tender hue !
A holy realm of Silence, a city of deep Peace,
Where Death leads all poor prisoners who have won release !
Long ranks of high surges, heaving dark against the bright
Heaven, fall illumed 'thwart iron crags, whose frown relents to Light.

Land's End, 1875.