Classic Poem

Darkness has filled the deep ravine;
Yet, down in that black cleft, unseen,
The restless guillemot still yell
Like fiends in some old fabled Hell.

And, standing on the crumbling brink
Of the black pit—he seems to sink
Into some chasm of old fears,
Where, in remote forgotten years
Of early consciousness, his mind,
Groping through night, had wandered blind;
Yet with the sense of hearing keen
To the shrill threat of the unseen
Voices that shrieked on every side,
And the dread whisper of the tide,
Close on his heels—the clutching sea
That should devour him presently,
Unless, from out that pit of night
And dinning dark, a gleam of light
Should rescue him …
He hears the cry
Of golden plover in the sky—
Of golden plover in Spring flight
Northward: and suddenly in the night
A rift appears; and into sight,
Between torn edges of black cloud,
The new moon sails: and all the loud
Abhorrent voices of old fears
Sink back into forgotten years.