Classic Poem

The sunbeams fall in golden flakes,
Like snow-banks flamed the clouds are furled;
The soft light shakes
On wave that breaks
On wave, far round the gleaming world.

Great brown, bare rocks, wet, purple dyed,
By sunset's beams, hedge in this realm
Of sky and wide,
Bleak sweep of tide,
Grey, tossed, scarce-plowed by keel or helm.

The east looms dark, the red day dips
Down under gleaming rock and wave,
In hushed eclipse,
While grey night slips
The cerements of her shrouded grave.

And buildeth up her arches dark,
From ruins of the dim dead day,
Till earth may mark
Each luminous spark,
Of stars that far in heaven stray.

And weaveth with her phantom hands
(Blind, dumb, save for the moon's white wreath,
And rude wind bands
From Eblis lands)
A shroud for the great lake beneath;

That beats and moans, a prisoned thing,
Rock-manacled beneath the night;
And tells each shore,
Forever more
Its sorrow in the pallid light.