Pictures in Rhyme/In the Night
IN THE NIGHT
Chalk cliffs a thousand feet in height,
Grey ghosts melting into the night.
And on their summit, to and fro,
Doomed on his weary beat to go,
Every night from ten till two,
A Coastguard paces to and fro.
If the wind blows high, if the wind blows low,
Through the pelting rain, through the driving snow,
To and fro, to and fro.
On the look-out lest a wrecker's light
Over the lower downs should glide,
Swung from a horse, whose motions might
Show like a boat on the heaving tide,
Luring rich ships, by its baleful glare,
Into that horrible, hidden snare;
From whose maw agape, with rock-set teeth,
Every breath seems charged with death.
To guide his feet a line is laid
Of chalk-blocks, whiter with whitewash made,
Over the green, elastic turf;
And his perch is so high that he cannot hear,
Even with his accustomed ear,
The monotonous-sounding swish of the surf.
To-night there's a fight
'Twixt the god of the sea and the gods of the air,
And there's death and destruction afloat everywhere.
The flaps of his oilskin like whipthongs crack,
As the Coastguard seeks his wonted track.
But the line leads over the cliff's pent brow,
And he falls a thousand feet below.
His cry, caught up by the rush of the air,
Startles the guillemots' nestless lair.
Who was it said, 'A life for a life'?—