| |
| FAR on its rocky knoll descried | |
| Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky. | |
| I climbed;—beneath me, bright and wide, | |
| Lay the lone coast of Brittany. | |
| |
| Bright in the sunset, weird and still, | 5 |
| It lay beside the Atlantic wave, | |
| As if the wizard Merlin’s will | |
| Yet charmed it from his forest grave. | |
| |
| Behind me on their grassy sweep, | |
| Bearded with lichen, scrawled and gray, | 10 |
| The giant stones of Carnac sleep, | |
| In the mild evening of the May. | |
| |
| No priestly stern procession now | |
| Streams through their rows of pillars old; | |
| No victims bleed, no Druids bow; | 15 |
| Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold. | |
| |
| From bush to bush the cuckoo flies, | |
| The orchis red gleams everywhere; | |
| Gold broom with furze in blossom vies, | |
| The bluebells perfume all the air. | 20 |
| |
| And o’er the glistening, lonely land | |
| Rise up, all round, the Christian spires. | |
| The church of Carnac, by the strand, | |
| Catches the westering sun’s last fires. | |
| |
| And there across the watery way, | 25 |
| See, low above the tide at flood, | |
| The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay | |
| Whose beach once ran with loyal blood! | |
| |
| And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!— | |
| All round, no soul, no boat, no hail! | 30 |
| But, on the horizon’s verge descried, | |
| Hangs, touched with light, one snowy sail! | |
| |
| Ah, where is he, who should have come | |
| Where that far sail is passing now, | |
| Past the Loire’s mouth, and by the foam | 35 |
| Of Finistere’s unquiet brow, | |
| |
| Home, round into the English wave?— | |
| He tarries where the Rock of Spain | |
| Mediterranean waters lave; | |
| He enters not the Atlantic main. | 40 |
| |
| O, could he once have reached this air | |
| Freshened by plunging tides, by showers! | |
| Have felt this breath he loved, of fair | |
| Cool Northern fields and grass and flowers! | |
| |
| He longed for it,—pressed on!—In vain. | 45 |
| At the Straits failed that spirit brave. | |
| The South was parent of his pain, | |
| The South is mistress of his grave. | |
| |
