GREAT, bright portal, shelf of rock, rocks fitted in long ledges, rocks fitted to dark, to silver granite, to lighter rock -- clean cut, white against white. High -- high -- and no hill-goat tramples -- no mountain-sheep has set foot on your fine grass; you lift, you are the-world-edge, pillar for the sky-arch. The world heaved -- we are next to the sky: over us, sea-hawks shout, gulls sweep past -- the terrible breakers are silent from this place. Below us, on the rock-edge, where earth is caught in the fissures of the jagged cliff, a small tree stiffens in the gale, it bends -- but its white flowers are fragrant at this height. And under and under, the wind booms: it whistles, it thunders, it growls -- it presses the grass beneath its great feet. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A DISCRETE LOVE POEM by JAMES GALVIN IF HE SHOULD COME by EDWIN MARKHAM WATERS OF BABYLON by LOUIS UNTERMEYER THE WEST WIND by JOHN MASEFIELD SUMMER DAWN by WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! by WALT WHITMAN |