| |
| THE COTEAU, broad, and long, and boisterous! | |
| The waves like white sea-monsters plunge and roll, | |
| Mighty, and grand, and wildly perilous, | |
| It lives a life of torment. A mad soul | |
| Seems shouting from each billow, and the howl | 5 |
| Of the lashed waters, as they foam and writhe, | |
| Is as Despair’s last shriek, when at the goal | |
| Where all hope ends they tumble headlong with | |
| A cry of anguish to the yawning gulf beneath. | |
| |
| Mad cries of horror pierce the seething shore; | 10 |
| Triumphal choruses roll back again; | |
| Up from the depths abysmal, evermore | |
| Rushes some swift embodiment of pain, | |
| Flying from the fierce conflict all in vain. | |
| A wild, despairing, agonizing cry; | 15 |
| A laugh of demons torturing the slain; | |
| Thus the sardonic strife goes crashing by; | |
| The nameless Terror rolls its burden up the sky. | |
| |
| From isle to isle ’twixt life and death we speed, | |
| From crest to crest, from wave to wave, we bound, | 20 |
| Where the scared billows seem to shun some deed | |
| Of blanching horror in mad tumult drowned; | |
| From isle to isle the turmoil rolls profound. | |
| The true enchantment this,—no legend rare, | |
| No wondrous tale by hoar tradition crowned, | 25 |
| But grand, terrific, true beyond compare, | |
| The vast sonorous war of passion shakes the air. | |
| |
| But suddenly from the infernal whirl | |
| The ambling current bears us far away, | |
| Where no pursuing wave is seen to curl, | 30 |
| No rapid shatters into diamond spray; | |
| While far behind, the breakers’ wild array | |
| Shout from the watery slope their threatenings dire, | |
| Looming like Mohawk ghosts at morning gray, | |
| With awful rage and impotent desire, | 35 |
| Striking the wildest chords of Nature’s mighty lyre. | |
| |
