d by
wind and surge,--the everlasting splendor of the sky.

She saw the quivering pinkness of waters curled by the breath of the
morning--under the deepening of the dawn--like a far fluttering and
scattering of rose-leaves of fire;--

Saw the shoreless, cloudless, marvellous double-circling azure of
perfect summer days--twin glories of infinite deeps inter-reflected,
while the Soul of the World lay still, suffused with a jewel-light, as
of vaporized sapphire;--

Saw the Sea shift color,--"change sheets,"--when the viewless Wizard of
the Wind breathed upon its face, and made it green;--

Saw the immeasurable panics,--noiseless, scintillant,--which silver,
summer after summer, curved leagues of beach with bodies of little
fish--the yearly massacre of migrating populations, nations of
sea-trout, driven from their element by terror;--and the winnowing of
shark-fins,--and the rushing of porpoises,--and the rising of the
grande-ecaille, like a pillar of flame,--and the diving and pitching
and fighting of the frigates and the gulls,--and the armored hordes of
crabs swarming out to clear the slope after the carnage and the gorging
had been done;--

Saw the Dreams of the Sky,--scudding mockeries of ridged foam,--and
shadowy stratification of capes and coasts and promontories long-drawn
out,--and imageries, multicolored, of mountain frondage, and sierras
whitening above sierras,--and phantom islands ringed around with
lagoons of glory;--

Saw the toppling and smouldering of cloud-worlds after the enormous
conflagration of sunsets,--incandescence ruining into darkness; and
after it a moving and climbing of stars among the blacknesses,--like
searching lamps;--

Saw the deep kindle countless ghostly candles as for mysterious
night-festival,--and a luminous billowing under a black sky, and
effervescences of fire, and the twirling and crawling of phosphoric
foam;--

Saw the mesmerism of the Moon;--saw the enchanted tides self-heaped in
muttering obeisance before her.

Often she heard the Music of the Marsh through the night: an infinity
of flutings and tinklings made by tiny amphibia,--like the low blowing
of numberless little tin horns, the clanking of billions of little
bells;--and, at intervals, profound tones, vibrant and heavy, as of a
bass viol--the orchestra of the great frogs! And interweaving with it
all, one continuous shrilling,--keen as the steel speech of a saw,--the
stridulous telegraphy of crickets.

Bu