The Shrine

(“she watches over the sea”)

I

Are your rocks shelter for ships?—

have you sent galleys from your beach,

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are you graded—a safe crescent—

where the tide lifts them back to port?

are you full and sweet,

tempting the quiet

to depart in their trading ships?

10

Nay, you are great, fierce, evil—

you are the land-blight.

you have tempted men

but they perished on your cliffs.

Your lights are but dank shoals,

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slate and pebble and wet shells

and sea-weed fastened to the rocks.

It was evil—evil

when they found you,

when the quiet men looked at you—

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they sought a headland

shaded with ledge of cliff

from the wind-blast.

But you—you are unsheltered,

cut with the weight of wind.

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you shudder when it strikes,

then lift, swelled with the blast—

you sink as the tide sinks,

you shrill under hail and sound,

thunder when thunder sounds.

30

You are useless—

when the tides swirl

your boulders cut and wreck

the staggering ships.

II

35

You are useless,

O grave, O beautiful,

the landsmen tell it—I have heard—

You are useless.

And the wind sounds with this

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and the sea

where rollers shot with blue

cut under deeper blue.

O but stay tender, enchanted

where wave-lengths cut you

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apart from all the rest—

for we have found you,

we watch the splendor of you,

we thread throat on throat of freesia

for your shelf.

50

You are not forgot,

O plunder of lilies,

honey is not more sweet

than the salt stretch of your beach.

III

55

Stay—stay—

but terror has caught us now,

we passed the men in ships,

we dared deeper than the fisher-folk;

and you strike us with terror,

60

O bright shaft.

Flame passes under us

and sparks that unknot the flesh,

sorrow, splitting bone from bone,

splendors thwart our eyes

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and rifts in the splendor,

sparks and scattered light.

Many warned of this,

men said:

there are wrecks on the fore-beach,

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wind will beat your ship,

There is no shelter in that headland,

it is useless waste, that edge,

that front of rock—

sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers,

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none venture to that spot.

IV

But hail—

as the tide slackens,

as the wind beats out,

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we hail this shore—

we sing to you,

spirit between the headlands

and the further rocks.

Though oak-beams split,

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though boats and sea-men flounder,

and the strait grind sand with sand

and cut boulders to sand and drift—

your eyes have pardoned our faults,

your hands have touched us—

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you have leaned forward a little

and the waves can never thrust us back

from the splendor of your ragged coast.

—
H. D.

Sea Garden, 1916