Poems (Van Rensselaer)/The Sunset Shore
THE SUNSET SHORE
Here, in the sunset hour of summer time, With mystical rhythm and rhymeOf color and of light they sing—the inviolable sky, The unalterable main,The untrodden sand-stretch featureless and pure,Framed by the dunes that shift and shift again Yet ever steadfastly As guardians of the solitude endure.
To east and west are spread the reachesOf the long level immaculate beaches;The low and level glory of the sinking sunFloweth aslant where the long breakers run,Turning to iridescent dust their feathered white,To chrysophrase their hollowed bulk of green.The slow last films of the retreating wave,Foam-threaded, clothe the sands in dappled sheenAs with a patterned lace. All amethystThe wide sea-spaces of the east and south, the veils of mistThat merge them in the purple heaven; all opal lightThe western seas and their inseparable sky.The horizon line is blotted out that gaveTo earth, to firmament, identity; The dunes forgot behind us, air alone And waters build our world, And they are fused to oneBy bold and subtile magics of the sun.There is no form, no substance, save In the forever-changing marchOf the swift billows' ever-changing arch Here close beside us curled,And shattered, and upcurled again,—All else a singing softness, luminous,Of color disembodied, vaporous,Ranging the scale of coolnesses from white empearled To every hyacinthine hueOf liquid violet, of melted blue— Cool, cool, till past the crestOf the low dune the sun sinks down, and thenFlushed rosy with reverberations of the red northwest.
There, where the drowsing landsAre beautiful beneath the sunset, and the strands Of crimson bordering the nether skyBreak to small cloudy isles that on a golden ocean lie, Is splendor of the earth at eventide—no more; But visible here, Beyond the southward-gazing shore,Is beauty disincarnate, half a hemisphere Dissolved to an irradiate mystery;Not void though without form; not void, but filledWith such a palpitant loveliness as thrilledThe harps of the archangels when they heardThe quivering æther answer to the first creative word.
The moments pass. We see—Nay, only as with dreaming senses know,With half-belief of ecstasy behold— The wonder of the flood and flow Of radiant infinity.The many moments pass, until the sun has wholly gone,Unweaving all his iris-spells. The sky grows wan,The sea grows dark; the mists are dim and cold.Slowly a deeper blackness gathers, for a wind blows now, Loud, louder, rolling upCloud-drifts that fill the vast celestial cup,Awhile so over-brimmed by delicate wineOf rapture, with a rough tempestuous draught,Chilling the soul as though it quaffedThe breath itself of melancholy and dismay. Chaos returns—the sphere is swept away. Naught lives but the inchoate storm. There is no moon, no star. Color has perished. FormHas vanished utterly: there is no more the lineOf billowing waters, but mere ghostly gleams of white, Fangs of a fierce and uncreated NightShouting, with elemental sounds, paeans of aimless war.
Easthampton.