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ater ringed about, And wrapped in sheeted foam from base to peak, A sheer, stupendous monolith, wrought out By the slow, ceaseless labor of the deeps, In awful isolation, old as Time, The gray, forbidding Rock of Skidloe stands-- Breasting the wild incursions of the North-- The grim antagonist of a thousand waves! Far to the leeward, faintly drawn against A dim perspective of perpetual storms, A frowning line of black basaltic cliffs Baffles the savage onset of the surf. But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe lifts His dark, defiant head forever mid The shock and thunder of contending tides, And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls back The rude, eternal protest of the sea! Colossal waters coil about his feet, Deep rooted in the awful gulfs between The measureless walls of mountain chains submerged; An infinite hoarse murmur wells from all His dim mysterious crypts and corridors: The inarticulate mutterings that voice The ancient secret of the mighty main. In all the troubled round of sea and air, No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zest Of life and light to the harsh monotone Of gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky; Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved Against the desolate emptiness of space; But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest--no soft And wistful glory of awakened dawn Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace. Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across The seething torment of the dread abyss, And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond; But, solitary and unchanged for aye, He towers amid the rude revolt of waves, His stony face seamed by a thousand years, And wrinkled with a million furrows, worn By the slow drip of briny tears, that creep Along his hollow cheek. His hidden hands Drag down the drowned and tossing wrecks that drive Before the fury of the Northern gales, And mute, inscrutable as destiny, He keeps his sombre secrets as of yore. The slow years come and go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time. But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea! Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly altitudes about With the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud; And on his awful
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