But at night with leaden sweep
Come the clouds along the flood,
Lifting in the vaulted deep
Pinions of a giant brood.
Charging by the slip, the whole
River rushes black and sheer,
There the great fish heave and roll
In the gloom beyond the pier.
All the lonely hollow town
Towers above the windy quay,
And the ancient tide goes down
With its secret to the sea.
OFF THE ISLE AUX COUDRES
The moon, Capella, and the Pleiades
Silver the river’s grey uncertain floor;
Only a heron haunts the grassy shore;
A fox barks sharply in the cedar trees;
Then comes the lift and lull of plangent seas,
Swaying the light marish grasses more and more
Until they float, and the slow tide brims o’er,
And then a rivulet runs along the breeze.
O night! thou art so beautiful, so strange, so sad;
I feel that sense of scope and ancientness,
Of all the mighty empires thou hast had
Dreaming of power beneath thy palace dome,
Of how thou art untouched by their distress,
Supreme above this dreaming land, my home.
AT LES EBOULEMENTS
TO M. E. S.
The bay is set with ashy sails,
With purple shades that fade and flee,
And curling by in silver wales,
The tide is straining from the sea.