The Lord of the Sand Hills

A cabin by a lonely shore, 
With one half-window, one low door, 
One dusky chamber, and no more.

There lived a solitary man,
Just where the dreary dunes began, 
That far along the marshes ran, 
As if huge ribs rose, one by one, 
Of some Titanic skeleton,
By centuries bared to rain and sun:
Its naked arm that salt winds bleach, 
The shifting sands and level beach 
Stretched southward in an endless reach.

Northward, a wilderness of rocks 
Lay, ruinous, in disordered blocks,—
Wild monument of wilder shocks 
In that dread battle, long ago,
That wrought the Titan's overthrow, 
And gave this land its air of woe.
Behind him, the sharp sedges grew, 
And wailed in every wind that blew, 
Responsive to the sad sea-mew.

The boundless ocean lay before,
Whose billows, with their stormy roar, 
Rushed trampling to his very door.
In midnight gloom, no more the same, 
Shapeless and vast, like doom, they came, 
In glimmerings of a ghostly flame!

Oft-times, as if a stranded cloud 
Were flung there, pealing signals loud,
The sea-fog rolled its icy shroud 
On a dead world, o'er which he heard 
The shrieking of some dismal bird,—
A lost soul's cry without the word!

To dwellers in the fields of green, 
Where trees their graceful branches lean, 
And beckon to their shadowy screen, 
What setting for our mortal state 
Could seem more wholly desolate, 
Or more the mocking sneer of fate?

Was the lone tenant of this wild 
Some cynic soul, unreconciled,
The step-dame Nature's surly child, 
With features savage as the land, 
Beard ragged as the sedgy strand, 
And brain as barren as the sand?

Ah, well, I might have deemed him so,
Had I not seen him come and go, 
Unchanged by fortune's ebb and flow.

Rude monarch of his rude domain,
He held the winds with tightened rein, 
What time he roved the watery plain.
The seas, impetuous or bland, 
Gave tribute to his tawny hand:
They may be vast, but he was grand!

He read the heavens with such an eye
As pierced the Apocalyptic sky, 
And saw the herald angels fly,— 
Northwind, who scatters in his path 
The vials of destroying wrath, 
And Auster with the boon he hath.
From all the spirits of the air, 
Who prophecy of foul or fair, 
He snatched their secret, unaware, 
And spread or reefed his sail to meet T
heir coming pinions, dark and fleet, 
Or twinkle of their dancing feet.

Lone master of the savage wild, 
Boon Nature loved her foster-child, 
Who wooed her kisses, fierce or mild.

Though all seem desolate and bare,
Forevermore her face is fair,
While any conquering soul is there.