Classic Poem

Elsewhere there is much crowing
At twelve, or thereabout,
And much of vainglory
Rising to a shout.—

Much vanity is seeping
And forming stalactites
In starless caves of Manhattan,
Even on starry nights.

But seaward in Bermuda,
Where the cocks crow at one,
Only in a Crystal Cave
Is neither star nor sun.

Adjacent is a tall lighthouse
That beckons one to climb
And look out on eternity
As of the English time…

Deep in a spell of languor
Labours a coral reef,
In which is hidden beauty
Veiled and remote from grief.

It lingers in a wave so blue,
Under a sea so deep,
That in its torpid growing
It seems to be asleep.

Quaintly averse to labour
Are corals, in the main,
Preferring to build slowly
Rather than move again.

And they are daily proving,
Near a Bermuda town,
That it is harder to hurry up
Than to hurry down.

Nature, whose northern lessons
Are for the coldly wise,
Teaches beauty as a gospel
Under Bermuda skies.

She is spelling an illusion
In the palms that lisp and sigh
On an isle to windward anchored
Of the seas that thunder by …

Rise, O my heart, go sailing,
While the pole star is in sight,
And the lantern flowers are burning
In a Bermuda night.