SKERRYVORE

OR love of lovely words, and for the

FOR Sake

Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen, Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled

To plant a star for seamen, where was then
The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants:
I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe
The name of a strong tower.

SKERRYVORE: THE PARALLEL

HE

ERE all is sunny, and when the truant gull

Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing Dispetals roses; here the house is framed Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine,

Such clay as artists fashion and such wood As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there

Eternal granite hewn from the living isle And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower That from its wet foundation to its crown Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds,

Immovable, immortal, eminent.

Y house, I say.

MY sunny doves

But hark to the

That make my roof the arena of their loves,
That gyre about the gable all day long
And fill the chimneys with their murmurous

song:

Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares

And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs;

And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath If any alien foot profane the path.

So, too, the buck that trimmed my terraces, Our whilom gardener, called the garden his; Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode And his late kingdom, only from the road.

M

Y body which my dungeon is,
And yet my parks and palaces:
Which is so great that there I go
All the day long to and fro,

And when the night begins to fall
Throw down my bed and sleep, while all
The buildings hum with wakefulness -
Even as a child of savages

When evening takes her on her way,
(She having roamed a summer's day
Along the mountain-sides and scalp)
Sleeps in an antre of that alp: -

Which is so broad and high that there,
As in the topless fields of air,
My fancy soars like to a kite

And faints in the blue infinite: ·

Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world's besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers' nets, And tops its topmost parapets:

Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to: If this born body of my bones The beggared soul so barely owns, What money passed from hand to hand, What creeping custom of the land, What deed of author or assign, Can make a house a thing of mine?