In all the troubled round of sea and air,
No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zest
Of life and light to the harsh monotone
Of gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky;
Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved
Against the desolate emptiness of space;
But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls
Athwart old Skidloe’s cloudy crest—­no soft
And wistful glory of awakened dawn
Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace. 
Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across
The seething torment of the dread abyss,
And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond;
But, solitary and unchanged for aye,
He towers amid the rude revolt of waves,
His stony face seamed by a thousand years,
And wrinkled with a million furrows, worn
By the slow drip of briny tears, that creep
Along his hollow cheek.  His hidden hands
Drag down the drowned and tossing wrecks that drive
Before the fury of the Northern gales,
And mute, inscrutable as destiny,
He keeps his sombre secrets as of yore.

The slow years come and go; the seasons dawn
And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks
Of august ages in the march of Time. 
But changeless still, amid eternal change,
Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all
The warring elements that grapple mid
The mighty insurrections of the sea! 
Gray desolation, ancient solitude,
Brood o’er his wide, unrestful water world,
While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore,
He wraps his kingly altitudes about
With the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud;
And on his awful and uplifted brows
The red phylactery of the lightning shines;
And throned amid eternal wars, he dwells,
His dread regality hedged round by all
The weird magnificence of exultant storms!

LIFE’S CROSSES.

“O life!  O, vailed destiny!”
  She cried—­“within thy hidden hands
What recompense is waiting me
  Beyond these naked wintry sands? 
For lo!  The ancient legend saith: 
  ’Take ye a rose at Christmas tide,
And pin thereto your loving faith,
  And cast it to the waters wide;
Whate’er the wished-for guerdon be,
God’s hand will guide it safe to thee!’

“I pace the river’s icy brink,
  This dreary Christmas Eve,” she said,
“And watch the dying sunset sink
  From pallid gold to ashen red. 
My eyes are hot with weary tears,
  I heed not how the winds may blow,
While thinking of the vanished years
  Beyond the stormy heave and throe
Of yon far sea-line, dimly curled
Around my lonely island-world.

“The winds make melancholy moan;
  I hear the river flowing by,
As, heavy-hearted and alone,
  Beneath the wild December sky,
I take the roses from my breast—­
  White roses of the Holy Rood—­
And, filled with passionate unrest,
  I cast them to the darkening flood. 
O, roses, drifting out to sea,
Bring my lost treasures back to me!