Monstrous caress of the ocean Fondling the obdurate land, Urged by abyssmal emotion Granite may hardly withstand, Beats of a world olden measure Savage but roughly in tune, Floodtime and ebb at the pleasure Of that horned enchantress - the moon. Alternate plunge and upheaval Strong as earth giants who strove Grandly in aeons primeval Braving omnipotent Jove; Forces terrific, whose rages Drown out the shrieking Typhoon Storming through infinite ages After a phantom - the moon! LOST BILLINGSGATE From Billingsgate the beacons’s flash No longer stabs the quivering dark, But fang like breakers foam and gnash Above its sand bars ribbed and stark. Where whispering grasses used to grow And nesting terns their shelter made, Now snarls the rasping undertow And breezes mutter - half afraid! For it has gone like Lyonnesse Of Arthur’s reign - enchanted realm Of dreamy eyed forgetfulness That saw the ocean overwhelm Her shores, till e’en the towers were drowned Where Merlin spun his evil spells, And fishers startle - when the sound Wells upward as from sunken bells! Yes, Billingsgate is lost to view Beneath the all engulfing sea, The lonely Isle the Pilgrims knew - But still it lives in memory. And sometimes in the dead of night We hear the shoal bemoan its fate Clothed in a shroud of breakers white - The ghost of vanished Billingsgate! TRANSFORMED A battered thing it seems That salt encrusted drift wood, but the skies Showed never rainbow with more gorgeous dyes Than gild that firelight’s beams. The cloud banks dull and grey Far in the west, are but a canvas spread For supernatural scenes in gold and red When ends the dying day. The icy Frost King lays His finger on the leaves and lo, the fires Of fairy land on autumn’s funeral pyres Seem everywhere ablaze. And so each inner trace Of life’s deep grief and cankered bitterness Is graven in those lines of kindliness Upon an aged face. HAUNTING ECHOES The music dies upon the strings But lingers on Like other sweetly treasured things Here once - and gone. The breeze that blurs the mirror pool Cannot erase The outline of the forest cool Upon its face. The haunting fragrance of the flowers Of yesterday Not all the intervening hours Can steal away. And loving friends we used to know Nor e’er forget Although they left us long ago Seem with us yet. LOST AT SEA