Poems (Hoffman)/The Granite Boulder of the Beach
THE GRANITE BOULDER OF THE BEACH.
Who could be sterner, colder,Who could be grander, older,Than I, the granite boulder, Monarch of beach and shore;Colder than human coldness,Older than human oldness,Bolder than human boldness, Who was my peer before?
Born in an age chaotic,Born to a throne despotic,Breaker and rare exotic Tremble beneath my frown;Resting from Nature's revelBack in an age primevalWho shall my grandeur level? Older than king or crown.
Brief are the generations,Boastful and weak the nationsTime's mighty revelations 'Graved on my armor cold,Science with eyes far seeing,Error ofttimes decreeingDraws from my birth and being Fancies and facts untold.
Waves in their aimless revel,Tossed up the glistening gravel'Till a beach firm and level Lies at my broad, gray base;Here happy children playing,Here happy lovers straying,To me their homage paying Gaze upward to my face.
O'er my broad brow are bendingBranches, their blooms suspendingFair, fragile beauty blending With grandest symmetry,While a blue breaker tossesTo me her tangled mossesFashioned in wreaths and crosses Flowers of the land and sea.
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Steady the sculptor's chiselSurer than deadly missileMoves while his careless whistle Mockingly floats o'er all,Dark earth, oh, be my pillow!Hide me, oh drooping willow!Chant dirges faithful billow, Great is my fall!
Held like a captive quaking,No strife for freedom making,Never a fetter breaking, Broken, defaced and scarred,Man, who to earth hath brought me,Man, who my ruin wrought me,Man, who with shame hath fraught me, Man, who my beauty marred,
Brief are thy generations,Boastful and weak thy nations,Transient thy best creations, Thy longest life a span;Owning in all thy scienceMine as a race of giants,Darest thou our defiance Weak, dying, timorous man?Slain by the storm's caressing,Choked by the breaker's blessing;Nature's great laws transgressing, Changing and weak and small.Man of decay partaker,Only to Nature's Maker;Ruler of storm and breaker, I shall arise to fall.
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Alas! a broken columnReared in a city solemn,Thus hath my glory fallen, All things are new and strange.Far from the wild waves' rollic, Far from the billows' frolic;At last to rise symbolic Of death, decay and change.