are you full and sweet,

tempting the quiet

to depart in their trading ships?

Nay, you are great, fierce, evil—

you are the land-blight—

you have tempted men

but they perished on your cliffs.

Your lights are but dank shoals,

slate and pebble and wet shells

and seaweed fastened to the rocks.

It was evil—evil

when they found you,

when the quiet men looked at you—

they sought a headland

shaded with ledge of cliff

from the wind-blast.

But you—you are unsheltered,

cut with the weight of wind—

you shudder when it strikes,

then lift, swelled with the blast—

 Prev. P 7/64 next