Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/256

 DOVER. 231

Come from their conflict with the raging seas So vengefully, that it is hard to hold A footing on the rock.

The moon is forth

In all her queenly plenitude, and scans The foaming channel with a look of peace But ill returned. For such a clamor reigns Between the ploughing waves and unyoked blasts, That the hoarse trumpet of the mariner Seems like the grass-bird s chirp.

And yet t is grand

To gaze upon the mountain surge, and hear How loftily it hurls the challenge back To the chafed cloud, and feel yourself a speck, An atom, in His sight, who rules its wrath, To whom the crush of all the elements Were but a bursting bubble.

Cliffs of chalk,

Old Albion s signal to the mariner, Encompass Dover, with their ramparts white, As in her vale, half-deafened by the surge, She croucheth down. Within their yielding breast, Deep excavations, and dark wreaths of smoke Mysterious, curling upward to the cloud, Reveal the soldier s home.

With Roman pride

The ancient Pharos, in its dotage, points To Cajsar, and the castellated walls Of yon irregular fabric speak of war : While France, who through the curtaining haze peers out

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