On Cormorant Rock, Seaconnet, Lighting the Pharos

Ha! What is this? What color-changing star

         Over the gnarled, contorted forest-trees,

         That darkly faced the gales of centuries,

Flings the new splendor of its avatar?

November’s baying hounds around it gnarr,

         The billowy dragons of the stormy seas,

         Writhing below in foam-lopped agonies,

Dash the mad spray against it from afar!

But still it burns unquenchable and bright,

         A fixed and never setting star, with beams

Now Mars-like red, and now like Venus, white,

         Shifting and beautiful as a maiden’s dreams,

New Sirius, I hail thee with delight,

         As through my glittering pane thy varied radiance streams.

 

Now joy to thee, O sailor, tempest tost!

         When clouds and darkness scowl like hungry doom,

         And far around thee roars the dismal boom

Of thunderous breakers on our iron coast,

No more shall terror reign, and hope be lost;

         A golden pharos through the shuddering gloom

         Shall guide thee safely from the watery tomb

That yawns to swallow all thy daring host

Our granite crags, with red, insatiate fangs,

         No more shall grind the giant warder hands

         His starry signal flaming o’er our heads;

That lamp shall banish gloom-fed fears and pangs

         From many a wakeful home far from the beam it sheds.

 

Behold the giant in his iron armor,

         Firm on his narrow rock, himself a rock,

         Unmoved by vast Atlantic’s charging shock,

Bearing his flambeau as a stately palmer

His golden bough; and never a god was calmer

         Than this red Titan as he dares to mock

         The rage of Neptune and the black-winged flock

Of wintry storms! – the while, a gallant charmer

Into still seas he guides the white-winged ships,

         And lures, like moths, against his flaring lamp,

Great, dazzled sea-birds, blown by foaming lips

         Of tempest landward, as with steady tramp

The hosted billows beat around his base,

         And with a loud recoil roll backward to their place.

 

Blow winds! and rage ye billows! till ye make

         The gnarled woods shudder, and the welkin crack;

         Scowl on, O, night! till all the air is black!

Our strong light-bearer ye may never shake,

His steel-clad bosom was not formed to quake;

         Your utter darkness cheers him, and calls back

         The fire of gladness to his pulses slack;

Gloom is the foe that holds his glee awake!

Sing for the triumph of his dauntless torch,

         O rescued mariner in your harbor’s calm!

         And thou unwidowed, sing thy cradle psalm

With cheerful hope! I too, who see him scorch

         The dun mist into glory, will confer

A poet’s boon on this, the unfallen Lucifer!