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kelp shifts,

Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting,
And under all a deep, dull roar,
Dying and swelling, forevermore,
Rock and moan and roar alone,
And the dread of some nameless thing
unknown,

These make Appledore.

These make Appledore by night:
Then there are monsters left and right;
Every rock is a different monster;
All you have read of, fancied, dreamed,
When you waked at night because you
screamed,

There they lie for half a mile,
Jumbled together in a pile,
And (though you know they never once
stir),

If you look long, they seem to be moving

Just as plainly as plain can be,

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With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey,

And, dropping straight and swift as lead,

Splits the water with sudden thud;--
This is Appledore by day.

A common island, you will say;
But stay a moment: only climb
Up to the highest rock of the isle,

Crushing and crowding, wading and Stand there alone for a little while,

shoving

Out into the awful sea,

And with gentle approaches it grows sublime,

Where you can hear them snort and Dilating slowly as you win

spout

A sens from the silence to take it in.

So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare,

You well might think you were looking down

From some

crown,

sky-silenced mountain's

Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tear
Locks of wool from the topmost cloud.
Only be sure you go alone,

For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud,
And never yet has backward thrown
Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd;
To more than one was never shown
That awful front, nor is it fit
That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed
Until the self-approving pit
Enjoy the gust of its own wit

In babbling plaudits cheaply loud;
She hides her mountains and her sea
From the harriers of scenery,

Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay,

Mouthing and mumbling the dying day.

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O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades,

The musing sunbeams pause and creep!
Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray,
Now shadows to a filmy blue,
Tries one, tries all, and will not stay,
But flits from opal hue to hue,
And runs through every tenderest range
Of change that seems not to be change,
So rare the sweep, so nice the art,
That lays no stress on any part,
But shifts and lingers and persuades;
So soft that sun-brush in the west,
That asks no costlier pigments' aids,
But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints,
Indifferent of worst or best,

Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints

And gracious preludings of tints,
Where all seems fixed, yet all evades,
And indefinably pervades

Perpetual movement with perpetual rest!

III.

Away northeast is Boone Island light;
You might mistake it for a ship,
Only it stands too plumb upright,
And like the others does not slip
Behind the sea's unsteady brink;
Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip
Upon it a moment, 't will suddenly sink,
Levelled and lost in the darkened main,
Till the sun builds it suddenly up again,
As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp.
On the mainland you see a misty camp
Of mountains pitched tumultuously:
That one looming so long and large
Is Saddleback, and that point you see
Over yon low and rounded marge,
Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe
Laid over his breast, is Ossipee;
That shadow there may be Kearsarge;
That must be Great Haystack; I love

these names,

Wherewith the lonely farmer tames
Nature to mute companionship
With his own mind's domestic mood,
And strives the surly world to clip
In the arms of familiar habitude.
'T is well he could not contrive to make
A Saxon of Agamenticus:
He glowers there to the north of us,
Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze,
Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to
take

The white man's baptism or his ways.

Him first on shore the coaster divines Through the early gray, and sees him

shake

The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines;

Him first the skipper makes out in the west,

Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous,

Plashing with orange the palpitant lines
Of mutable billow, crest after crest,
And murmurs Agamenticus!

As if it were the name of a saint.
But is that a mountain playing cloud,
Or a cloud playing mountain, just there,
so faint?

Look along over the low right shoulder
Of Agamenticus into that crowd
Of brassy thunderheads behind it ;
Now you have caught it, but, ere you
are older

By half an hour, you will lose it and

find it

A score of times; while you look 't is

gone,

And, just as you've given it up, anon
It is there again, till your weary eyes
Fancy they see it waver and rise,
With its brother clouds; it is Agio-
chook,

There if you seek not, and gone if you look,

Ninety miles off as the eagle flies.

But mountains make not all the shore The mainland shows to Appledore ; Eight miles the heaving water spreads To a long low coast with beaches and

heads

That run through unimagined mazes, As the lights and shades and magical hazes

Put them away or bring them near, Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles

Between two capes that waver like threads,

And sink in the ocean, and reappear,
Crumbled and melted to little isles,
With filmy trees, that seem the mere
Half-fancies of drowsy atmosphere;
And see the beach there, where it is
Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and
packed

With the flashing flails of weariless

seas,

How it lifts and looms to a precipice,

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Eastward as far as the eye can see,
Still eastward, eastward, endlessly,
The sparkle and tremor of purple sea
That rises before you, a flickering hill,
On and on to the shut of the sky,
And beyond, you fancy it sloping until
The same multitudinous throb and thrill
That vibrate under your dizzy eye

In ripples of orange and pink are sent Where the poppied sails doze on the yard,

And the clumsy junk and proa lie
Sunk deep with precious woods and
nard,

Mid the palmy isles of the Orient.
Those leaning towers of clouded white
On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean,
That shorten and shorten out of sight,
Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay,
Receding with a motionless motion,
Fading to dubious films of gray,
Lost, dimly found, then vanished
wholly,

Will rise again, the great world under, First films, then towers, then highheaped clouds,

Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly
Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds,
That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder,
Crushing the violet wave to spray
Past some low headland of Cathay;-
What was that sigh which seemed so

near,

Chilling your fancy to the core?
T is only the sad old sea you hear,
That seems to seek forevermore
Something it cannot find, and so,
Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe
To the pitiless breakers of Appledore.

How looks Appledore in a storm? I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic,

Butting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder,

A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below

To where they are warmed with the central fire,

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the lighthouse slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown

Full and fair on White Island head,
A great mist-jotun you will see
Lifting himself up silently
High and huge o'er the lighthouse top,
With hands of wavering spray outspread,
Groping after the little tower,

That seems to shrink and shorten and
cower,

Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop,
And silently and fruitlessly
He sinks back into the sea.

You could feel its granite fibres racked, You, meanwhile, where drenched you As it seemed to plunge with a shudder

and thrill

Right at the breast of the swooping hill,

And to rise again snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge,

While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep,

And the next vast breaker curled its edge,

Gathering itself for a mightier leap.

North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers

You would never dream of in smooth weather,

That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together;

Look northward, where Duck Island lies,
And over its crown you will see arise,
Against a background of slaty skies,
A row of pillars still and white,
That glimmer, and then are gone from
sight,

As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night,

The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight,

Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide,

Where the breakers struggle left and right,

stand,

Awaken once more to the rush and

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