Where the mingled sky and water faded into fairy-land,
Smaller than her tiny model, deftly launched from childhood’s hand.
With a statelier swell and longer, up the glacis of the shore,
Came the waves that leapt so freshly in their youth, an hour before.
So I made an end and, turning, reached a scallop-crested rock,
In the stormy spring-tides hurling back the tumult of their shock.
There reclining, gazed a moment at the pebbles by my feet,
Left behind the billowy armies on their oceanward retreat;
Thousands lying close together, where the hosts a passage wore,
Many-hued, and tesselated in a quaint mosaic floor.