Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, And under all a deep, dull roar, Dying and swelling, forevermore, Rock and moan and roar alone, And the dread of some nameless thing unknown,
These make Appledore.
These make Appledore by night: Then there are monsters left and right; Every rock is a different monster; All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, When you waked at night because you screamed,
There they lie for half a mile, Jumbled together in a pile,
And (though you know they never once stir),
If you look long, they seem to moving
Just as plainly as plain can be,
A common island, you will say; But stay a moment: only climb Up to the highest rock of the isle,
Crushing and crowding, wading and Stand there alone for a little while,
And with gentle approaches it grows sublime,
Where you can hear them snort and Dilating slowly as you win
A sense from the silence to take it in.
So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare,
You well might think you were looking
From some sky-silenced mountain's
Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tear Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. Only be sure you go alone,
For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, And never yet has backward thrown Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; To more than one was never shown That awful front, nor is it fit That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed Until the self-approving pit Enjoy the gust of its own wit
In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; She hides her mountains and her sea From the harriers of scenery,
Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay,
Mouthing and mumbling the dying day.
Trust me, 't is something to be cast Face to face with one's Self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, The bore of books and the bores of the street,
From the singular mess we agree to call Life,
Where that is best which the most fools vote is,
And planted firm on one's own two
So nigh to the great warm heart of God, You almost seem to feel it beat Down from the sunshine and up from the sod;
To be compelled, as it were, to notice All the beautiful changes and chances Through which the landscape flits and glances,
And to see how the face of common day Is written all over with tender histories, When you study it that intenser way In which a lover looks at his mistress.
O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades,
The musing sunbeams pause and creep! Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, Now shadows to a filmy blue, Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, But flits from opal hue to hue, And runs through every tenderest range Of change that seems not to be change, So rare the sweep, so nice the art, That lays no stress on any part, But shifts and lingers and persuades; So soft that sun-brush in the west, That asks no costlier pigments' aids, But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints, Indifferent of worst or best,
Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints
And gracious preludings of tints, Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, And indefinably pervades
Perpetual movement with perpetual rest!
Away northeast is Boone Island light; You might mistake it for a ship, Only it stands too plumb upright, And like the others does not slip Behind the sea's unsteady brink; Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip Upon it a moment, 't will suddenly sink, Levelled and lost in the darkened main, Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. On the mainland you see a misty camp Of mountains pitched tumultuously: That one looming so long and large Is Saddleback, and that point you see Over yon low and rounded marge, Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; That shadow there may be Kearsarge; That must be Great Haystack; I love these names,
Wherewith the lonely farmer tames Nature to mute companionship With his own mind's domestic mood, And strives the surly world to clip In the arms of familiar habitude.
Till now you dreamed not what could 'T is well he could not contrive to make
With a bit of rock and a ray of sun; But look, how fade the lights and shades Of keen bare edge and crevice deep! How doubtfully it fades and fades, And glows again, yon craggy steep,
A Saxon of Agamenticus:
He glowers there to the north of us, Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, Unconvertibly savage, and scorus to
The white man's baptism or his ways.
Eastward as far as the eye can see, Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, The sparkle and tremor of purple sea That rises before you, a flickering hill, On and on to the shut of the sky, And beyond, you fancy it sloping until The same multitudinous throb and thrill That vibrate under your dizzy eye In ripples of orange and pink are sent Where the poppied sails doze on the yard,
And the clumsy junk and proa lie Sunk deep with precious woods and nard,
Mid the palmy isles of the Orient. Those leaning towers of clouded white On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, That shorten and shorten out of sight, Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay, Receding with a motionless motion, Fading to dubious films of gray, Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly,
Will rise again, the great world under, First films, then towers, then highheaped clouds,
Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, Crushing the violet wave to spray Past some low headland of Cathay ;- What was that sigh which seemed so
Chilling your fancy to the core? T is only the sad old sea you hear, That seems to seek forevermore Something it cannot find, and so, Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe To the pitiless breakers of Appledore.
How looks Appledore in a storm?
I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic,
Butting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder,
A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below
To where they are warmed with the central fire,
You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill
Right at the breast of the swooping hill,
And to rise again snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge,
While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep,
And the next vast breaker curled its edge,
Gathering itself for a mightier leap.
North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers
You would never dream of in smooth weather,
That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together;
Look northward, where Duck Island lies, And over its crown you will see arise, Against a background of slaty skies, A row of pillars still and white, That glimmer, and then are gone from sight,
As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night,
The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight,
Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide,
Where the breakers struggle left and right,
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