White Caps

     From the blue deep, far and vapory, 
     Swathed In Autumn's filmy drapery
Touched by the declining sun,
     Mark a freshening Zephyr coming 
     With a low, melodious humming,
And the waters crowd before her where her twinkling footsteps run.

     Gray-green as the wind-waved willows, 
     Lay in noon the slumbering billows,
Now in purpling azure dyed,
     That anon go sliver-crested,
     As If viewless Naiads rested
On the waves, with white plumes nodding to the rocking of the tide.

     Tender as the cloudy fringes
     That the morning sunlight tinges
With its molten pearl and gold,
     Are the moving peaks that totter 
     On the undulating water,
When they crumble into snow-dust as their curves are over-rolled.

     Like a flock of lambs at shearing
     When they bound across the clearing,
Scattered down the verdant knolls, 
     Suddenly they leap and whiten, 
     Now are lost, and now they brighten, 
And a hum of living gladness o'er the liquid meadow rolls!

     All the frolic billows, glancing 
     In the sunny beam, are dancing
To the piping of the breeze, 
     O, with million after million 
     Stretching to the blue pavilion,
Till they dwindle to a twinkle in the shimmer of the seas!

     With a more prevailing murmur,
     As the rising Wind treads firmer,
The bent waters leap and go, 
     And their thin translucent edges,
     As if curling over ledges,
Clash and rustle into fleeces of untarnishable snow.

     Snowy gulls that, drifting, sweeping.
     Seem those very foam-wreaths leaping
Into air to live and fly,
     Wheel and plunge into the combing
     Billow, as it were that foaming
Rushing back into its bosom from its yearning to the sky.

     What a mystery of motion, 
     Form and color, in the ocean, 
Like the flickering of a flame;
     Shape and shadow, ever shifting, 
     Interflowing, interdrifting,
With a song of inward melody whose language is the same.