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...TO A DEAD LOVER by LOUISE BOGAN THE CROSS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE POET SPEAKS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON ITALIAN PICTURES: THE COSTA SAN GIORGIO by MINA LOY SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MAGRADY GRAHAM by EDGAR LEE MASTERS MODERN PARAPHRASE OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET 29 by GEORGE SANTAYANA ADAM AND HIS FATHER by KAREN SWENSON |