POETRY.
SUNSET BY THE SEA.
I STOOD upon a cliff, whose sheer dark side Went shelving downward steeply to the shore. A sultry haze had all that day enwrapped The heavens, and earth, and Ocean. Overhead The tyrant sun flamed in his sapphire realm, And, merciless untired, abated not The cruel brightness of his wanton fires. Parched was the earth and fevered. Ev'ry flower Drooped its sweet head, the very birds were still ; No kindly awning of wind-fretted cloud Chequered the swaying corn with rippling shade. The sea did mock the aching blue above, And motionless upon its molten waves The fishing-boats npreared their baffled wings. But now the pallor of the dying day Mellowed the steely sky to softer hues. At last the sun had stooped, in act to dip, Beneath the Ocean's rim, yet Westward still The blood-red glory of his orb did stain The sullen clouds with crimson. One bright shaft Of quivering, dancing light, athwart the sea Reached from the Western heavens to the shore.
Save for that lambent path, the earth and sea Sank down beneath the sceptre of the night.
The breeze that swooned away and died at morn, Sobbed itself back to life ; and homeward bound A brown-sailed ship forged slowly through the waves, And passed into the flood of fairy light.
Lo! for a moment she was glorified, Enkindled were her masts and tapering yards, And wreathed with golden fire. Around her hull Soft sighed the phosphorous ripples, till she passed Into the dim and darkling space beyond, And all her borrowed radiance fled away.
Slowly the gorgeous hues did fade and die Wherewith the sun doth on his latter path Incarnadine the firmament of God.
A moaning sigh was wafted from the sea, The long grass shuddered on the wind-swept cliff, Far, far below me, I could hear the plash Of breakers on the beach, though all that day Voiceless had been their ebb. Upon my ear Fell the gull's scream, and round about my head, Grim myrmidons of night, the dusky bate Wheeled on their phantom flight, and one by one From ship and harbour flashed the twinkling lights Athwart the sea, as though to mock the gleam Of mightier beacons in the starlit sky. R. E. P.
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