 | St. Augustine's Holiday and Other Poems |  |
236
THOUGHTS BY THE SEA.
I
I had been reading Paul's great argument,Where, after those strange chapters, darkly penn'd,
He bursts out with ω βαθος at the end;
When—whether thought or memory might present
Such picture—lo! a galleon was bent
Under reef'd topsails through a strait to drop.
Hung o'er with cliffs that almost touch'd at top.
Dark o'er the dreary sea the vessel went,
Till instantaneously she had pass'd through
A touch of moonlight on her sails; before her,
World without end, the waves; the blue sky o'er her.
Behold, I thought, an image grandly true!
After Predestination's narrow road
The silver ocean of the Love of God.
II
A hot day in September. A white mistClung to the vale, and up the hill a blur,
As of thin smoke, part blue, part silverer,
Stretch'd o'er the corn. The ripples lazily kiss'd
As on the bent I lay their sound to list.
237
I saw a green down stretch without a stir.
A curlew was the only harmonist.
The sole shapes there were gulls, that in the heat
Strutted upon the sward a space and back,
White-plumed; and crows, like crones in shawls of black
Dropp'd glossy from the shoulders to the feet.
But far afield, howe'er the day may burn,
Harvesters work—and that is much to learn.
| St. Augustine's Holiday and Other Poems | |