Poems (Van Rensselaer)/The Sunset Shore

THE SUNSET SHORE

Here, in the sunset hour of summer time,
With mystical rhythm and rhyme
Of color and of light they sing—the inviolable sky,
The unalterable main,
The untrodden sand-stretch featureless and pure,
Framed by the dunes that shift and shift again
Yet ever steadfastly
As guardians of the solitude endure.

To east and west are spread the reaches
Of the long level immaculate beaches;
The low and level glory of the sinking sun
Floweth aslant where the long breakers run,
Turning to iridescent dust their feathered white,
To chrysophrase their hollowed bulk of green.
The slow last films of the retreating wave,
Foam-threaded, clothe the sands in dappled sheen
As with a patterned lace. All amethyst
The wide sea-spaces of the east and south, the veils of mist
That merge them in the purple heaven; all opal light
The western seas and their inseparable sky.
The horizon line is blotted out that gave
To earth, to firmament, identity;
The dunes forgot behind us, air alone
And waters build our world,
And they are fused to one
By bold and subtile magics of the sun.
There is no form, no substance, save
In the forever-changing march
Of the swift billows' ever-changing arch
Here close beside us curled,
And shattered, and upcurled again,—
All else a singing softness, luminous,
Of color disembodied, vaporous,
Ranging the scale of coolnesses from white empearled
To every hyacinthine hue
Of liquid violet, of melted blue—
Cool, cool, till past the crest
Of the low dune the sun sinks down, and then
Flushed rosy with reverberations of the red northwest.

There, where the drowsing lands
Are beautiful beneath the sunset, and the strands
Of crimson bordering the nether sky
Break to small cloudy isles that on a golden ocean lie,
Is splendor of the earth at eventide—no more;
But visible here,
Beyond the southward-gazing shore,
Is beauty disincarnate, half a hemisphere
Dissolved to an irradiate mystery;
Not void though without form; not void, but filled
With such a palpitant loveliness as thrilled
The harps of the archangels when they heard
The quivering æther answer to the first creative word.

The moments pass. We see—
Nay, only as with dreaming senses know,
With half-belief of ecstasy behold—
The wonder of the flood and flow
Of radiant infinity.
The many moments pass, until the sun has wholly gone,
Unweaving all his iris-spells. The sky grows wan,
The sea grows dark; the mists are dim and cold.
Slowly a deeper blackness gathers, for a wind blows now,
Loud, louder, rolling up
Cloud-drifts that fill the vast celestial cup,
Awhile so over-brimmed by delicate wine
Of rapture, with a rough tempestuous draught,
Chilling the soul as though it quaffed
The breath itself of melancholy and dismay.
Chaos returns—the sphere is swept away.
Naught lives but the inchoate storm.
There is no moon, no star.
Color has perished. Form
Has vanished utterly: there is no more the line
Of billowing waters, but mere ghostly gleams of white,
Fangs of a fierce and uncreated Night
Shouting, with elemental sounds, paeans of aimless war.

Easthampton.