High ’mid the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet <br />Riseth in Babylonian mass above, <br />In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair <br />Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone, <br />And gaze with a keen wondering happiness <br />Out o’er the sea. Unto the circling bend <br />That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain <br />It stretches, changeful as a lover’s dream— <br />Into great spaces mapped by light and shade <br />In constant interchange—either ‘neath clouds <br />The billows darken, or they shimmer bright <br />In sunny scopes of measureless expanse. <br />’Tis Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour, <br />Calm, or but gently heaving;—yet, O God! <br />What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled <br />In slumber, under that wide-shining face! <br />While o’er the watery gleam—there where its edge <br />Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails <br />Of some tall ship, whose hull is yet unseen, <br />Hang as if clinging to a cloud that still <br />Comes rising with them from the void beyond, <br />Like to a heavenly net, drawn from the deep <br />And carried upward by ethereal hands <br /><br /><br />Charles Harpur<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-coast-view-2/
