BREAKERS

Far out at sea there has been a storm,

And still, as they roll their liquid acres,

High-heaped the billows lower and glisten.

The air is laden, moist, and warm

With the dying tempest's breath;

And, as I walk the lonely strand

With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned

By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,

Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling,

Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling —

Watch, and muse, and vainly listen

To the inarticulate mumbling

Of the hoary-headed deep;

For who may tell me what it saith,

Muttering, moaning as in sleep?

Slowly and heavily

Comes in the sea,

With memories of storm o'erfreighted,

With heaving heart and breath abated,

Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,

And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow.

Slowly and heavily

Grows the green water-mound;

But drawing ever nigher,

Towering ever higher,

Swollen with an inward rage

Naught but ruin can assuage,

Swift, now, without sound,

Creeps stealthily

Up to the shore —

Creeps, creeps and undulates;

As one dissimulates

Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,

Through passion grown immense, he

Bursts forth hostilely;

And rising, a smooth billow —

Its swelling, sunlit dome

Thinned to a tumid ledge

With keen, curved edge

Like the scornful curl

Of lips that snarl —

O'ertops itself and breaks

Into a raving foam;

So springs upon the shore

With a hungry roar;

Its first fierce anger slakes

On the stony shallow;

And runs up on the land,

Licking the smooth, hard sand,

Relentless, cold, yet wroth;

And dies in savage froth.

Then with its backward swirl

The sands and the stones, how they whirl!

O, fiercely doth it draw

Them to its chasm'd maw,

And against it in vain

They linger and strain;

And as they slip away

Into the seething gray

Fill all the thunderous air

With the horror of their despair,

And their wild terror wreak

In one hoarse, wailing shriek.

But scarce is this done,

When another one

Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun,

And sucks away the shore

As that did before:

And another shall smother it o'er.

Then there's a lull — a half-hush;

And forward the little waves rush,

Toppling and hurrying,

Each other worrying,

And in their haste

Run to waste.

Yet again is heard the trample

Of the surges high and ample:

Their dreadful meeting —

The wild and sudden breaking —

The dinting, and battering, and beating,

And swift forsaking.

And ever they burst and boom,

A numberless host;

Like heralds of doom

To the trembling coast;

And ever the tangled spray

Is tossed from the fierce affray,

And, as with spectral arms

That taunt and beckon and mock,

And scatter vague alarms,

Clasps and unclasps the rock;

Listlessly over it wanders;

Moodily, madly maunders,

And hissingly falls

From the glistening walls.

So all day along the shore

Shout the breakers, green and hoar,

Weaving out their weird tune;

Till at night the full moon

Weds the dark with that ring

Of gold that you see her fling

On the misty air.

Then homeward slow returning

To slumbers deep I fare,

Filled with an infinite yearning,

With thoughts that rise and fall

To the sound of the sea's hollow call,

Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach

Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,

To scatter a spray on my dreams;

Till the slow and measured rote

Brings a drowsy ease

To my spirit, and seems

To set it soothingly afloat

On broad and buoyant seas

Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge

Of the melancholy surge.