Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Some sweet brown hills, like Galilee,
Group here or there this dark, still sea,
Some costly woods, mahogany,
Red cedar, like to Lebanon,
Broad olives, like Gethsemane;
But silence sits all things upon,
As in some dark, hushed house of death.
You look behind, you would turn back,
You question if you yet take breath.
The blackness of this silent sea
Is oiled and burnished ebony—
The very silence turns to black.