r hills more
Lie to leftward of this shore.
On the right Peak Hill arises
Ever rises, sickening, o'er.

Two score rotting years I've seen
Sidmouth sit those hills between:
Only Sidmouth--and twice over
Must I bide it, as I've been.

Then a churchyard hole for me,
By the dull voice of the sea.
Rotting, still in Sidmouth rotting,
Rotting to eternity.

WIDOWED

One wild gull on a wilder storm,
Winging to keep her lone heart warm.
One wild gull by the surf--and I,
Beaten by wind and rain and sky.

One wild gull in the offing lost,
Wilder heart in my bosom tost.
One wild gull--O why but one!
Two, dear God, should there be--or none!

TO THE SEA

Are you enraged, O sea, with the blue peace
Of heaven, so to uplift your armied waves,
Your billowy rebellion against its ease,
And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves,
From shuddering profundities where shapes
Of awe glide thro entangled leagues of ooze,
To hoot your watery omens evermore,
And evermore your moanings interfuse
With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or do you labour with the drifting bones
Of countless dead, O mighty Alchemist,
Within whose stormy crucible the stones
Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist,
Are crumbled by your all-abrasive beat?
With immemorial chanting to the moon,
And cosmic incantation, do you crave
Rest to be found not till your wilds are strewn
Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

You seem drunk with immensity, mad, blind--
With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn,
Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind
Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn
Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.
Bound in your briny bed and gnawing earth
With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides,
You are as Fate in torment of a dearth
Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how you shatter silence from the world,
Incarnate Motion of all mystery!
Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled
Whither your Ghost tempestuous can see
A desolate apocalypse of death.
Yea, how you shatter silence from the world,
With emerald overflowing, waste on waste
Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled
On isles and continents that shrink abased!

And yet, O veering veil of the Unknown,