“And the gale’s gathering made the darkness’ blind, / Water and air one intermingled roar”

Okay, a short Poetry Monday pause from Millay sonnets for one by her contemporary:


Once by the Pacific, Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.


NB: Frost was born in San Francisco and lived in California until he was 17.

---L.

Subject quote from The Wanderer, John Masefield.