University of Virginia Library

THE COAST OF CLARE.

FOUR SONNETS.

I.—LISCANNOR BAY.

Two walls of precipices black and steep,
The storm-lashed ramparts of a naked land,
Are parted here by leagues of lonely sand
That make a bay; and up it ever creep
Billowy ocean ripples half asleep,
That cast a belt of foam along the strand,
Seething and white, and wake in cadence grand
The everlasting thunder of the deep.
And there is never silence on that shore—
Alike in storm and calm foam-fringes gird
Its desolation, and the Atlantic's roar
Makes mighty music. Though the sea be stirred
By scarce a breath of breeze, yet evermore
The sands are whitened, and the thunder heard.

II.—NEAR KILKEE.

I once did wander on a misty day
In solitary mood along the verge
Of those dark cliffs that hear the mournful dirge
Of billows breaking in Intrinsic Bay;
Far, far below rose sheets of blinding spray
Flung from the waves that ceaselessly submerge
The fallen fragments of the cliffs, and surge,
And foam, and boil, and then are sucked away.
White sea-mists hid the waters waste and wide:
The winds were hushed, yet broke eternally
The melancholy thunder of the sea,
That voice of solitude: companionless
I wandered on: there reigned on every side
The majesty of utter loneliness.

III.—LOOP HEAD.

A sheer surf-beaten island fronts the shore,
Close to the headland cliffs, whence stormy waves
Have rent it: there the sea imprisoned raves
Between dark dungeon walls, and evermore
Deep in that chasm, with sullen booming roar,
Comes surging in a rushing raging tide,
That pants and boils, and climbs each dripping side,
Then sinks as madly as it rose before.
Beyond, bright crests of ocean waves are tost
Into the far faint haze that ends the view:
Northward, the headlands of a rocky coast
Are white with surf—while southward, broad and blue,
The Shannon rolls, in tranquil majesty,
Into the billows of the boundless sea.

IV.—FROM THE CLIFFS OF BALTARD.

Across the heaving ocean's billowy flow,
Lie paths of gold that deepen into red:
The west is bright: black storm-clouds overhead
Give a strange sweetness to the evening glow.
The swell of the Atlantic breaks below,
With thunderous resonance: long lines of white
Tell where the iron coast beats back the might
Of stormy seas:—dark headlands fringed with snow—
From blue Loophead to Arran's sunken strand—
Deep gloomy precipice-encircled bays,
Sheer craggy islets, flats of whitened sand,
Are all scarce dimmed by veils of purpling haze:
While somewhere in the glory of the west
Lie the enchanted islands of the blest.